Long story short, I wanted to write a script that would run on a Raspberry Pi. Instead of running the commands to copy the script over to the Pi while fixing or iterating on the script. over and over again. I decided to use MobaXterm (Version 23.2) since it had a built-in file manager of sorts that would allow you to drag and drop files as well as some other nice quality of life features.

I boot up the installation that I’ve had sitting dormant for a couple years and start trying to enable the file explorer. Little did I know, you can’t just connect and have the file manager show up on the sidebar. You have to save it to your favorites. But I didn’t know this at the time, so thinking something’s wrong, I decided to uninstall and reinstall the latest version. I go about my business working on the project. And then the following day AKA this morning I’m just watching YouTube on my computer and instinctually Minimize the browser to look at my desktop and I see that ninety percent of what’s on my desktop is completely gone.

I was thinking maybe the shortcuts were somehow deleted, but the files were still there. I go to my desktop folder and it’s completely empty. I checked the logs on my computer and there was no Windows Defender hit. I can see that at the exact time when I uninstalled MobaXterm My desktop was wiped and none of the files were in the recycle bin. So yeah. The title wasn’t hyperbolic, I could uninstall MobaXterm at any time and my desktop could be wiped. It could have just been a bug with that old version. Or the bug could have persisted with the current version I just installed. I have no idea.

I did some research and there’s no reports of anything like this happening. I sent an email to the support team and I hope to hear back sometime next week. Though they they’ll probably just take a report from me and say thanks for the help.

Important note: I went ahead and tested to see if uninstalling the newest version deleted anything else from my desktop. And the dummy file that I created was still there. But either way, I’m not messing around with that software anymore. Unless they acknowledge what I have brought up to them.

I understand why people do backups for big changes slash configuration changes, but I should not have to worry about backing up my computer to uninstall an SSH client. That is just absurd to me.