W10 - Preparing for disaster. BSOD etc.

[Bender Blues]

So lets assume, you re-boot or power up and the master boot record has been corrupted. Maybe an update gone wrong, past the point of rolling back. Or perhaps the registry decided to unwind itself....

What tools, repair software, OS, OS repair tools etc. should you have at your ready - all on a USB in case of disaster that always happens at some point?

 

A toolbox on USB to ID issues(s) and have everything you need to toss in a drawer to get a cripple OS back up to square one.  

I've tried to look or gather but many just talk about a complete re-install. Worse case scenario obliviously and not why I started this. 

 

Thanks a bunch! Have a great weekend and stay safe.

 

[Zando_]

Simple solution, just keep a regularly updated clone of the machine if you're that worried. If it borks itself, copy the clone back over. I have a clone of my system on a mostly fresh install so if it fucks itself over to hard I don't have to start from completely square one, but I also don't have all the clutter I tend to accumulate over the months between reinstalls (tend to reinstall Windows one or two times a year, usually just to get a clean slate). 

[Bender Blues]

49 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Simple solution, just keep a regularly updated clone of the machine if you're that worried. If it borks itself, copy the clone back over. I have a clone of my system on a mostly fresh install so if it fucks itself over to hard I don't have to start from completely square one, but I also don't have all the clutter I tend to accumulate over the months between reinstalls (tend to reinstall Windows one or two times a year, usually just to get a clean slate). 

Thats a good one! But that might be second to last resort, before re-installing. Meaning theres a greater chance of something going wrong with the re-cloning vs spot repairing.

 

Kinda shocked I haven't heard more ideas of a recovery/repair suite to have at the ready...  

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Bender Blues said:

Thats a good one! But that might be second to last resort, before re-installing. Meaning theres a greater chance of something going wrong with the re-cloning vs spot repairing.

 

Kinda shocked I haven't heard more ideas of a recovery/repair suite to have at the ready...  

Most techies at least are used to reinstalling Windows. Usually when it fucks itself it's way easier to just reinstall than to spend 3 days wrangling it back to semi-working before it finishes the job a month later. That's why some people get out ahead of the curve and just regularly reinstall Windows every 6-12 months. 

[Bender Blues]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

Most techies at least are used to reinstalling Windows. Usually when it fucks itself it's way easier to just reinstall than to spend 3 days wrangling it back to semi-working before it finishes the job a month later. That's why some people get out ahead of the curve and just regularly reinstall Windows every 6-12 months. 

Yeah. But thats not an option on this machine. Theres 2+ years of finite settings on nearly every program on this machine. For example, someone doing graphic design with endless massaging getting everything perfect and set, re-installing and spending over a week trying to remember and get everything back to square one would be a nightmare.

 

And thats just one graphic tool. 

[Zando_]

7 minutes ago, Bender Blues said:

Yeah. But thats not an option on this machine. Theres 2+ years of finite settings on nearly every program on this machine. For example, someone doing graphic design with endless massaging getting everything perfect and set, re-installing and spending over a week trying to remember and get everything back to square one would be a nightmare.

 

And thats just one graphic tool. 

And that is why you use a clone. Spending a week wrestling Windows (or even a few days, I've spent 3+ days trying to get a windows install to work before just clean installing anyways) is pointless when you can just take a few hours to reflash that clone from last Saturday before x thing changed and broke it all. 

[GoodBytes]

23 hours ago, Bender Blues said:

So lets assume, you re-boot or power up and the master boot record has been corrupted. Maybe an update gone wrong, past the point of rolling back. Or perhaps the registry decided to unwind itself....

If that happens, then you have faulty drive, or you used one of those "PC Optimizer" tools, or registry cleaners. Ignoring the fact that consumer grade hardware is only reliable ~97% of the time, and not 99-99.99% like server hardware is, and ignoring power loss during update, and ignoring the few cases where A/V that the user installed started to false positive and started to block/remove system files: The issues you have listed are normally linked to faulty hardware or user error.

 

Quote

What tools, repair software, OS, OS repair tools etc. should you have at your ready - all on a USB in case of disaster that always happens at some point?

Windows install disk for the recovery tool is a great start.

And I have on hand Hiren's BootCD, which uses a modified WinPE environment to give you a bootable version of Windows with a desktop and a series of built-in utilities to diagnose and fix problems.

 

-- Thread moved to OS > Windows subsection --

[GoodBytes]

22 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Most techies at least are used to reinstalling Windows. Usually when it fucks itself it's way easier to just reinstall than to spend 3 days wrangling it back to semi-working before it finishes the job a month later. That's why some people get out ahead of the curve and just regularly reinstall Windows every 6-12 months. 

A big problem is that search engines (all of them) are fooled by fake help websites, nor promotes Microsoft own documentation.

Then again, they use social engineering to get people to click their links, such as:

"[SOLVED] How to fix <your search terms>"

And 99% of the content of the page suggested to do, is not related to one's problems, and then tends to end up with their wonderful software solution that fixes all issues using a click of a button by using the latest and greatest Magic Technology 2.0 (TM).

 

Sadly, when people ask for help on forums, other does a Google search and post the same crap. And answers.microsoft.com, is filled with wonderful helpful "MVPs", which ignores the problems that the user has, ask them to do a bunch of time-consuming report collecting to post, mark their copy & paste mentioned guide as solution, and when the few users that do go through all the effort to provide the reports requested, they are left in the dust of a great desert. If you want to be an MVP, simply do like existing MVPs, and you'll be invited to be one by another MVP, and you can continue to be oh-so-very-helpful to others. I don't get what Microsoft has that site up, there is no actual mods or admins... it's like self-sustained with these "MVPs". Anyways.

[Alan G]

Best approach IMO is to always have a clone of your OS.  There are a number of software solutions that you can use for this purpose and that also allow you to set it so you can regularly do a fresh clone.  I use Nova Backup for this as it's also what I use for doing my daily back ups.  It does a fresh system image every month and I will occasionally run it after a significant software upgrade or modification to make sure all my settings are preserved.  I have a bunch of programs that have custom settings and the thought of doing a fresh Windows install is not pleasant.

[Vishera]

On 7/23/2021 at 7:29 PM, Bender Blues said:

What tools, repair software, OS, OS repair tools etc. should you have at your ready - all on a USB in case of disaster that always happens at some point?

Backup your data and have a USB drive with this on it: https://www.hirensbootcd.org/