Windows Update Killed Win 10 Install

[sikari2015]

So after installing the "emergency" update to Windows 10 on one of my machines, it rebooted and then immediately failed to load the boot device during the startup sequence. It gets the frowny blue screen of death and a message "inaccessible boot device". This tells me the System Reserved partition has been screwed around with by the update and now won't load Windows.

 

It leads to me needing to run a repair install of Windows, or a Fix MBR type command line through a bootable USB.

 

This is the THIRD TIME that Windows Update has killed this install on this computer, and the 5th time it has happened to me overall.

 

After the second time I've made sure to have Restore Points created before updating, and I've even made full system backups of my primary computer for when it decides to do it on that one next. HOWEVER, when it goes through the Windows Automatic Repair sequence it can't find any restore points. So that was a waste of time.

 

Is this common for others? Is there a preventative step I can take to stop it happening completely? WHY THE HELL DOES IT KEEP HAPPENING?!?!?!?! Chkdsk and Memtest all report perfectly healthy hardware.... WTF!

[Energycore]

*looks at disabled update service* I suppose I'll keep that disabled then

[sikari2015]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

*looks at disabled update service* I suppose I'll keep that disabled then

Yeah, but Meltdown and Spectre...

[PineyCreek]

Windows 10 is bloated garbage.  I wish I didn't have to rely on it for much of my PC gaming...

 

I miss Win2k...I could run that for months without rebooting...

[KoreanAsian]

Was this an official update release? I never got an update and things like this is why I try to stay away from unofficial releases

[Jurrunio]

My system doesnt even show the update when I make it look for one, despite the 16299.125 build number suggesting that is wasnt updated

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

5 minutes ago, Energycore said:

*looks at disabled update service* I suppose I'll keep that disabled then

thats the first thing i do when i install a windows   > windows + r > services.msc > disable windows update nothing but trouble from it ( see so many ppl with issues, i never had a issue and i never used it )

[JohnMiller92]

Re-install Windows 7.

 

No seriously, just got the patch for W7 and it installed/working perfectly lol

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Valkyrie Lenneth said:

thats the first thing i do when i install a windows   > windows + r > services.msc > disable windows update nothing but trouble from it ( see so many ppl with issues, i never had a issue and i never used it )

Funny thing is, I still got update prompts anyway a couple days ago (before this Meltdown meltdown so must be something else), so I took ownership of System32 and disabled all permissions for the executable that was nagging me. Showed 'er who's boss.¹

 

¹ Energycore in no way endorses or encourages violence toward women, or really anyone, and is wholly against the perpetuation of such behavior

[PineyCreek]

4 minutes ago, Valkyrie Lenneth said:

thats the first thing i do when i install a windows   > windows + r > services.msc > disable windows update nothing but trouble from it ( see so many ppl with issues, i never had a issue and i never used it )

Stupid question since I've never attempted it on Win10.  If you disable the Windows update service in Windows 10, how are you manually installing updates?  Or do you?

[KoreanAsian]

2 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

Stupid question since I've never attempted it on Win10.  If you disable the Windows update service in Windows 10, how are you manually installing updates?  Or do you?

Windows Update Service is for automatic updates. You can always manually download and install any updates as long as you can find them and is compatible with your hardware

[sikari2015]

So the recommendations from the armchair experts so far...

 

1 - Never update your software so you make sure you remain vulnerable to all sorts of nasties and attacks. I don't know about you, but I use my computer for many sensitive things I don't want criminals getting a hold of, simple stuff like banking. "Oh but I won't be a target", I bet you know one friend who had to deal with Ransomware at least once. They weren't the target, but sh!t happens.

 

2 - Reinstall an older operating system instead, even though the question was how to avoid having to reinstall anything. I like Windows 10. In my own independant testing I have found it to be faster than Windows 7 yet have more features and usability that I appreciate.

 

3 - Stay away from unofficial releases.... it was the January 2018 Windows Update through the Windows Update Service, it only does official updates.

 

4 - Worked fine for me.... Great! I'm so happy for you!

 

I wasn't asking "Who did it work for?" I asked "Who ELSE did it NOT WORK FOR?" and "How can I stop Security and Windows updates destroying my boot information?"

Thank you all for your input so far...

 

 

What I would really appreciate now is someone who has had the same problems, and found a solution to stop it reoccuring.

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

How many times have you done a clean install? 

 

But otherwise this seems to be the norm for Windows 10. It really is bad. 

[Nite-Ninja]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

How many times have you done a clean install? 

 

But otherwise this seems to be the norm for Windows 10. It really is bad. 

It really is.

 

My MSI Gaming laptop requires a specific GPU driver to have the switchable graphics to work properly. But Windows Update keeps trying to install the new driver, even though I even told it not to install drivers through the group policy client So every update that I have to do, i gotta reinstall my GPU drivers.

 

So Windows update pretty much ignores user input regardless of what you do. Even if you make your Internet connection a metered one, updates still do their thing. I still keep the metering on to keep background processes from constantly calling home though.

 

In the case of the OP, seems like an isolated incident so far. I would assume the install was a dirty upgrade of an older version of Windows. Might need to change your drive type in the BIOS to AHCI instead of IDE mode if its not already.

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

1 hour ago, PineyCreek said:

Stupid question since I've never attempted it on Win10.  If you disable the Windows update service in Windows 10, how are you manually installing updates?  Or do you?

temporary enable it

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

1 hour ago, Energycore said:

Funny thing is, I still got update prompts anyway a couple days ago (before this Meltdown meltdown so must be something else), so I took ownership of System32 and disabled all permissions for the executable that was nagging me. Showed 'er who's boss.¹

 

¹ Energycore in no way endorses or encourages violence toward women, or really anyone, and is wholly against the perpetuation of such behavior

ah thats from security center not windows update service, u need to disable notifications from security center

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Valkyrie Lenneth said:

ah thats from security center not windows update service, u need to disable notifications from security center

Well I did it the punk way instead

 

But good to know

[sikari2015]

17 hours ago, Nite-Ninja said:

It really is.

 

My MSI Gaming laptop requires a specific GPU driver to have the switchable graphics to work properly. But Windows Update keeps trying to install the new driver, even though I even told it not to install drivers through the group policy client So every update that I have to do, i gotta reinstall my GPU drivers.

 

So Windows update pretty much ignores user input regardless of what you do. Even if you make your Internet connection a metered one, updates still do their thing. I still keep the metering on to keep background processes from constantly calling home though.

 

In the case of the OP, seems like an isolated incident so far. I would assume the install was a dirty upgrade of an older version of Windows. Might need to change your drive type in the BIOS to AHCI instead of IDE mode if its not already.

 

It was a fresh install from newly downloaded Win 10 Media Creator USB with UEFI support. I'm well aware of AHCI and IDE settings and it is set as AHCI. It boots to the windows loading screen so it isn't a BIOS issue, it's a Windows System Reserved/BootLDR issue. Seems that Windows Update has a habit of corrupting my boot records sometimes.

 

Still hoping someone else has had this problem and found a way to prevent it being borked while still maintaining updates.

[sikari2015]

There has to be something wrong with the Windows update and the X58 chipset because I bit the bullet and did a complete fresh reinstall of Windows 10 on the offending PC. The update then reapplied and immediately caused Kernel faults resulting in the PC not booting to Windows again.

This time, luckily, the Automatic Repair worked and rolled back the update. It booted back into Windows without any issue whatsoever.

 

Definitely the January 2018 anti-Meltdown/Spectre update causing the problem. I've had to disable the update service for now. This is so stupid.

 

 

EDIT: research shows it isn't just the X58 chipset, so some other factor isn't playing nice with the January 2018 (KB4056892) update. Solution seems to be roll back the update, or prevent it installing in the first place by Disabling Windows Update Service.