The February update broke a copy of Win10 on this PC. With Microsoft having gotten rid of loads of Windows development staff, moving to more of a ship 1st, fix later model, and relying on the Insider program, this sort of thing is only going to become more common. The number of security vulnerabilities has risen as well -- threatpost[.]com/reported-critical-vulnerabilities-in-microsoft-software-on-the-rise/129964/
There's also something that I personally find disquieting about Win10 -- it's why I spend most of my time in Win7, though I do use Win10, & could easily move to it full time. I've found Win10 has [what's to me] an alarming lack of consistency. There are several copies of Win10 installed here -- PCs, VMs, tablets, a 2-in-one, & a miniPC -- and it's been not uncommon for some of those copies to behave slightly differently. It's mostly minor stuff [Thankfully], like the Mail & Store icons disappearing from the Task Bar on 3 of those copies of Win10, but at different times, though there also have been total failures, like this update breaking just this one copy of Win10.
At any rate, I thought that a brief run through of how I used my disaster prep to recover that copy of Win10 might be helpful. What I call disaster prep is not complicated or costly -- to me calling it disaster prep sounds overblown, but I don't know what else to call it. I simply store the latest copies of partition image backups on a 2nd, internal hard drive, & I install a base, minimal copy of Windows that I can use if/when things go wrong -- it also comes in handy when I create those partition image backups, because running from a separate copy of Windows, those backup archives are a bit smaller. And it pretty much runs counter to what Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc. recommend, but then they're not about you -- they're about how they can make money from you, whether it's from payments, fees, additional sales, or selling data etc., while they try to gain market dominance by making you dependent on them.
Today the Microsoft way is to reset, reinstall Windows, & they've made that a part of the Win10 installation, with the setup files stored in a Recovery partition. To Microsoft's thinking, ideally you'll only run software from their store, which will be automatically reinstalled for you after the reset. That's seldom the case in real life however, with the store ignored for the most part, and the success of the reset / reinstall not guaranteed. And with the driver situation what it is today, the success of a fresh Windows install is not guaranteed either.
PC sales have been declining for several years, & there are more & more cheaper Windows devices on the market, so the components used in Windows devices today can come less from known brand names & more from small shops doing limited production runs. At the same time Microsoft wants to be the main distribution source for drivers [via Windows Update], & is encouraging manufacturers to give them whatever drivers, & Not make them available to the customers. That may work someday, but that day isn't here yet -- that's why Microsoft often advises upgrading or changing Windows versions in place, on top of existing installs, so Windows knows what drivers to (re)use.
OK, that said, here's what happened to me... the February update seemed to be going according to plan, but during the restart it stalled for a bit at 89%, finally moving closer to 100% before saying it couldn't complete the update, & was putting things back. That usually doesn't happen successfully in my experience, so it's a viable option to bail right then & there, but I had other things to do, so I let it proceed. Back in Win10, the 1st thing I do when a Windows update fails is to download the update from the Microsoft Update Catalog -- downloading & then running the update is usually faster, and more importantly, less trouble prone. catalog[.]update[.]microsoft[.]com
I first tried the Delta update, which said it didn't apply to this copy of Windows -- that apparently happens when there's a newer or later copy of the update already installed. I tried the full update package, & it reported that the update had already been installed. I checked the Windows Update window, and sure enough it showed it was just waiting for a restart. At this point one viable option was to try to uninstall that update -- which may or may not work since its install was faulty -- and try to install the update I downloaded -- which again may or may not have worked, depending on what was broken & what was removed from the prior installation attempt. As above I had other stuff to do, so I let it try the restart, which like the 1st time aborted. Unlike the 1st time though I shut the PC down.
I went to boot into Win7 to restore a backup of that copy of Win10, but got error messages that there were disk problems that needed checking on every partition. Errors on the partition where that broken copy of Win10 lives would be expected, since I had just powered off to shut it down -- errors on the other partitions OTOH is something I've seen whenever a copy of Win10 has blown up. You can't check a Win10 partition in Win7, so I restarted into my base copy of Win10. As above, when & where I've got the available disk space, I install a base copy of Windows so I don't have to use a bootable USB stick or drive, which takes a bit longer to boot & to get things done.
It's a convenience that doesn't take long to set up -- less than an hour to set it up & add 7-zip & backup apps -- takes up less than 20 GB of space, and has the only downside that every once in a while I take the time to update it. And with Win10 it should work fine un-activated -- it'll have just a few, non-critical limitations -- though I got this copy activated when Win10 was new & Microsoft was generous about it. And this sort of base copy has come in handy dozens of times.
So I booted to that base copy of Win10, running the disk [partition] checks while the February update was downloading & installing. Note that disk checking in Win10 is fairly fast but a bit flaky... You right click a partition [drive letter] in Windows Explorer, select properties, & go to error checking on the 2nd tab. Then you get two choices, disk scan, which I normally choose, and below that, scan & fix. If you choose scan, & it finds problems [in my experience this is rare], if you click for more info you'll see it recommends running chkdsk /f . If you click error checking a 2nd time, you don't get the option of scanning & fixing the drive, and if you run the disk scan, it will tell you all is OK, even if it isn't. SO it is best when it tells you there's a problem to open the Command Prompt, running as admin, going to each partition [drive letter] -- type X: where X = the drive letter -- typing chkdsk /f , & pressing Enter. You'll also have to press Y & hit Enter when it asks to lock the drive partition. And if you want to check the partition with the copy of Windows that you're running, it will schedule that to happen next time you restart. That's slower than doing it in Windows, so in this case I skipped running chkdsk on the partition with this base copy of Windows, remembering to check it in the restored copy of Win10 once it was restored.
By the time I was done running chkdsk -- I've got a fair number of partitions to check -- Windows Update was ready for a restart, so I did that, and once I was back in this base copy of Win10, I restored the latest backup image for the broken copy. Because I was running a regular copy of Windows on a regular internal hard drive, & because that backup image was on a 2nd internal hard drive, restoring that copy took less than 20 minutes rather than an hour or so. Once it was done I booted into that restored copy of Windows 10.
Now I still had to perform the update, so I ran the complete update package I had downloaded, & it worked fine. After double checking in Windows Update that everything was cool, I ran Disk Cleanup to get rid of the update leftovers. The amount of space it was reclaiming was notably less that what I got with the other copies of Win10, so I knew something was up there too. In this case the C:\Windows\ SoftwareDistribution\ Download\ folder still held well over 1 GB when cleanup was done, so I deleted it, running Windows Update to make sure all was well & to recreate that Download folder. I could have deleted the entire SoftwareDistribution folder, but then my Update History would be gone in Windows Update.
Last step, I reinstalled &/or updated any software that had changed since the last backup, and it's time to mention that it's not a bad idea to do cost vs. benefit analysis. I could backup daily or weekly rather than my current practice, which is to backup only when there are significant changes, or before I do something I consider a risk. Each backup takes time & electricity to perform, & space to store. The odds of having to restore a backup are fairly slim -- on average I restore a backup every 4 - 6 months, across all hardware. Not having a backup that was more current cost me about 40 minutes of updating & installing software. But, I saved many, Many times that 40 minutes by not performing more backups over the last several months. I also wound up updating that base copy of Windows 10. But the time I saved running chkdsk in a native copy of Windows made up for that, so the convenience came at effectively zero cost.
Likewise I could have tried to get the broken update working in the copy of Windows 10 that it broke. How long it might take & the odds of success were unknowns. I knew it would take roughly 20 minutes to restore a backup, & I knew it would take at least 1/2 an hour to update software, so the gamble was whether I would be able to fix things in less than an hour. I played it safe, deciding not to try fixing things. If it was a problem with Win7 or Win8, knowing what broke might well pay dividends, because those versions of Windows are consistent, and odds are I would encounter the problem again. With Win10 I might as well sacrifice a couple mice &/or keyboards to whatever computer deities, because simple bad luck seems behind this sort of thing rather than any sort of logic. After all, starting fresh a do-over worked just fine -- AFAIK there's no reason the 1st try broke. I guess maybe it's time to decide which is my least favorite mouse, and how best to perform the sacrifice.
P.S. Cost/benefit analysis also applies to today's GOTD, Heimdal PRO. The dev needs more people saying good things about the software so it'll show up near the top of the list when folks Google -- probably one reason it's on GOTD. It's not competing with AV software, so it probably isn't a good fit for test sites like av-test[.]org. So you get 6 months free use of a product that may or may not help keep you secure, with the downside that you have to install, maybe uninstall, with the risk that something undesirable might happen that comes from installing any software. Now what's an acceptable level of risk, whether from installing software or from cybercriminals is something everyone has to determine for themselves.
