• Welcome to Orpington Astronomical Society.
 

News:

New version SMF 2.1.4 installed. You may need to clear cookies and login again...

Main Menu

Windows 10 update just bricked my laptop.

Started by Mac, Mar 28, 2022, 12:25:01

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Mac

Morning Peeps.

Just to let you know, if you use windows 10 there might be an issue with the current updates.
My machine updated itself last night and then promptly died.

HP Machine, Windows 10 home, 512 SSD, only a year old.
Was up to date with current updates.

All i was presented with was a black low res (800x600) screen and absolutly nothing on the start menu. (would indicaate some sort of safe mode but it wasnt)
All i had was the context menu (right mouse click) and that was it.

After it updated it rebooted, it moaned about a couple of files which it (aparently sorted) and then rebooted again.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinarry, i had my log in screen and i logged in and that was it.

Rotating dots and nothing, nada, it eventually booted to the black screen,

All of my docs ect were there, but everything else was gone, no programs worked, everything moaned that xyz was missing.
I had to do everything through the command prompt, even trying to get explorer to run was a challenge.

I tried to uninstall the updates which was sucessful but didnt sort the problem, then i tried to use a system restore point from last week, only to be told there wasnt one.
There should have been about a dozen but alas none.

I tried safe mode and windows recovery, but it kept moaning that it didnt have access to the windowsapps folder which is a hidden system folder.
So if it didnt have access to it, gawd knows whats gone wrong.

Creating a new profile sort of worked, I can still access all of my stuff, quite a few programs still dont work but im just going to back everything up and reinstall windows.

windows still moans about access to the c:\programfiles\windowsapps folder in the new profile, which is its own problem.
It also spits it dummy out and says that i need to be connected to the internet, which i am.

I've used a live linux (mint if your interested) distro to check the disk for errors, viruses, malware ect, all clean, its just going to be a pain to reinstall everything back to the way it was.

I've used file recovery software to search for the system restore points but it found none, which is really odd, especially as i manually created one last week, only because i hadnt created one this year.

Not ruling out a partial SSD Failure just yet (could be), but i'll let you know.

I'll run a full disk check after i've backed up everything.

Mac.

Just checked online, aparently its very common..

Mac

Hmmmm, Update.

It might be looking like a SSD Failure.  :!
I've been checking through the windows system folder and i have 1000's of files all zero bytes.

I've checked my docs and downloads and its the same.
Loads of my files are all zero bytes.

It could be a disk issue with the FAT Table. and they have just lost their entries or it could be part failure of the SSD.

Watch this space.

Mac.

Carole

OMG Mac, hope it is all backed up somewhere.

Carole

Mac

QuoteOMG Mac, hope it is all backed up somewhere.

Nope  :P :cheesy:

Everything i need is on my server at home, which is linked to my google drive.
All i do is just copy it to the google drive folder and leave it there, so i always have around 3 copys at any one time,
My laptop
Google drive & My nas drive.

Most of the stuff i lost can be re downloaded, they were only you tube videos for me to watch on my flights to spain.

Its just a pain as to why it failed.
I had no warnings, no random drop outs.

I'll know more once i test the drive.
If it is the SSD Failing then i should be able to get a new one under warranty.
14 months is pretty poor.

I am hoping it was just windows trashing the NTFS tables

Oh well, the joys of computers.

Mac

Update.

It appears I have an M2 SSD drive which is an intel optane ssd
This means it has an SSD and an NVRAM drive built in to give a huge boost in speed.

The downside is they are prone to failing as my recent google searches have proven.
With spectacular data loss.

So it wasnt the windows update, (well it was sort of because it commanded a reboot fo the machine to finish)
this reboot probably coinsided with an issue on the drive and the NVRAM probably failed which would have wipped the data, hence the zero sized files,
Also as the zero sized files were all the last files i accessed on the SSD im 99% sure that the NVRAM part failed,
As the update was being written to the NVRAM so my docs were being writen to the true SSD which is why some were ok and some were zero bytes.
And also why there were 1000's of files in the system part and also the windowsapps folders all with zero file size.

So it looks like i need a new M2 drive, just need to recover the recovery info off so i can install windows without paying again.

Mac.

Rick

Ugh. Bad luck. :cry: I had a similar issue with an SD card on te meteor camera RPi failing. There's an option with the RPi to run what they call an "overlay file system" where it keeps files in RAM and writes them to the SD card when it can. This is fine until the SD card fails (as they do). The Pi kept running for a while, but when it was re-booted all those files it hadn't quite managed to write to the SD card got lost. That was, luckily, only a night's worth of meteor observations. I was able to recover most of the data from the SD card, but it's a card that is now stuck in read-only mode. That, itself, was a lucky break, as SD cards can fail in write-only mode, and then you're right up the creek...