Consumers had reported on having trouble in installing an update that was meant to fix an issue dealing with the Explorer.exe's frequent crash occurrences since it was upgraded to Windows 10 Build 9879. While Microsoft had released a hotfix to solve the issue, it seemed like the company has no plan to release a new build at least until early 2015.
According to Microsoft, the percentage of PCs which were affected by the problem when the update was installed had reached 12 percent. It was said that in such cases, the update would fail to install. Microsoft looked deeper into the issue and learned that the problem was caused by two underlying bugs.
The first has something to do with the new System Compression code that was introduced by Microsoft in Build 9879. The code can be useful among systems with SSDs which seek to reduce disk usage by the OS. In some cases, the logic for low-space detection becomes inverted, causing Windows to compress automatically and function as a background operation.
The second involved those PCs which had their system compression enabled. This causes a muck on the way that the file system tracks deleted data. The installer would then suspect that the extraction of the temp files had failed.
According to Gabriel Aul of Microsoft, the easiest solution is now available through Windows Update which offers a new hotfix to the problem.
"One more hotfix today for #WindowsInsiders addressing a second high frequency explorer.exe crash. Replicating to WU servers now," tweeted Aul.
Windows watcher Larry Seltzer of ZDNet said that consumers should expect more failing updates from Microsoft. The company's complex products such as Windows, Office and Exchange coupled with a huge and diverse user group are speculated to bring more issues.
"There are just too many configurations and third-party products for Microsoft to test," said Seltzer. "The update processes for Windows, Office and Exchange have become too complex and unwieldy. There's little Microsoft can do about it in the short term. They brought it on themselves, mostly by having excessively long support lifecycles."
Seltzer noted that as soon as all software becomes cloud based, that would be the only time that updates can silently roll out without the users' notice. He concludes that until it happens, Microsoft and users would just have to deal with the status quo and expect more issues when an update is released.
