On 6/7/2023 9:08 PM, T wrote:
Hi All,
I had a call fro a customer that had a Windows
build update go foobar. It corrupted him out.
Now I know that I can do an in place reinstall
keeping files of Windows 10, but it requires
that you run it from Windows. (Thank you so
freaking' much!)
I have found this on the web:
How to Reinstall Windows 10 from USB drive
https://www.stellarinfo.com/article/how-to-install-windows-10-from-usb.php#Six_Pointer
https://www.stellarinfo.com/public/image/catalog//article/data-recovery/install-windows-10-from-usb/choose-to-reset-your-PC-image12.jpg
https://www.stellarinfo.com/public/image/catalog//article/data-recovery/install-windows-10-from-usb/choose-to-remove-everything-image13.jpg
Can anyone tell me if the above is still valid with 22H2?
Many thanks,
-T
I don't understand.
How are the options offered in the Stellar article, helping ?
I don't see this rescuing anyones bacon.
It's still going to leave a mess.
One way to do this, is one of those user state migration tools,
which copies the user state from an old OS, to a new one, and those
tools cost roughly $50 per usage. You don't buy that software, you
rent it, and... it comes with tech support (which is why it costs $50).
Usually it has trouble with one program, and if you contact the
tech support, they can remote in and finish the job. Part of the
fifty bucks. Laplink has products, and a couple of other competitors
do too. On the product that has a "demo", I ran it here, and the
stupid thing couldn't even list my "old" Program Files folder :-)
I would expect the others, to do a better job, and the others
do not offer a faux demo program. The demo was a joke. It's
not even a decent teaser.
*******
"Windows build update go foobar"
Windows build updates, don't go foobar, not any more.
The initial bug with release upgrades, was on the final reboot,
there could be trouble, and the rollback sequence would not work.
And that is foobar for the user, because the rollback design was
intended to cover everything. But they "missed" the possibility
that the system would not come up on the final reboot.
They fixed that. Now, even if the OS is not ready to boot into
the final OS, the installation process is still in control, it logs
the error condition and starts the rollback. It then rolls back
to the state it had originally (plus or minus a few tiny
registry settings perhaps, like maybe making MSEdge the default browser).
The release upgrade process should keep a Windows.old folder.
That has more than the C:\Windows contents. It also seems to
contains some amount of Program Files content. In an "emergency",
the installer uses this folder, to orchestrate an hour-long rollback. It migrates the materials back.
*******
What Windows critically relies upon, is the boot menu. In other
words, to the user, when a process "goes off the rails", the
most likely scenario, is the machine is trying to boot
from the wrong disk drive. While normally, during a release
upgrade, it makes a temporary BCD which gets right to the point,
if a process is to run off the rails nicely, it would be
the contents of the BCD which aren't working as expected.
Or, the OS simply isn't even using the BCD it just wrote, at all.
It takes the eagle eye of the user, to notice the boot symptoms
in this case, and relay them to you. Is the screen black, with
some baloney about "no boot media found" ? The user needs to give
you some idea, whether the foobar-ness of the situation, is
cause by a boot issue.
But short of your foobar-ness being a completely destroyed SSD (hardware/ssd-firmware failure), or an issue with the NTFS file
system, really, the upgrade installer has all the rollback options
it needs. It's generally pretty good about space calculations.
If this was a laptop or a tablet, some of those are cramped
for space, and that raises the odds of some space thing being
calculated incorrectly. But when I've pinched the sucker on
purpose, to test its space calcs, it managed to finish the
install with 3GB of space remaining. Not a lot of space. But,
the space signaled to me that "yes, I know how to calc the space".
For example, it can turf the hiberfile, just so it can finish.
Or adjust the pagefile down, to cinch the deal. Or, it can ask
you to insert a USB stick for "temporary files". I've never been
asked to do that, so that's a tablet option.
I know you just want to push a button and move on, but perhaps
this situation can be salvaged. Maybe all it needs, is some
assistance booting, such as using the popup boot menu and selecting
the Windows Boot Manager on the correct drive. Or some other
clever selection from whatever shows in that screen.
So while there was a "hole" in the initial implementation,
it's better than it used to be. And unless NTFS has been destroyed,
you should be able to see a Windows.old sitting on that partition.
Which contains the materials needed for a rollback. No, I don't
know how to "manually trigger a rollback", with the exception
of restoring the boot process into that installer. So the installer
is in control again. If it's not booting to the installer, the
installer cannot finish the job, one way, or, the other way.
Paul
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