KB5036979 is a preview update.  What in the world is a hospital doing releasing preview updates to production machines?

Let me research as that just came out on the 23rd.  You may have to reimage.

I’m not seeing anything reported nor anything trending as the dead bodies haven’t washed up yet (congrats you are the first).  What brand are these?  Have they had their bios updated in light of the fact that these updates include secure boot fixes.  Did these machines have the April update of the 9th installed already?

Do you have a support contract with Microsoft otherwise I would strongly recommend reporting this in the feedback app and I’ll post on the patch management forum to get more eyeballs.

Try the following…on ONE affected computer.

Use a working computer and create bootable Windows 10 installation media on a USB flash drive.

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10

Boot the computer from the installation media.

Click Next on the first screen.

On the second (Install) screen, select Repair your computer at the bottom left.

Select Troubleshoot.

Select Uninstall Updates.

Select Uninstall latest quality update and follow the instructions.

Sexist — just ask Susan.

Zig

All,

We found this while searching for this issue on the web.

We now have 100+ computers in our company dead just like this. We do not allow quality updates to come through our asset management tool so it’s very mysterious how these updates came through.

We still have not found proof that this update is causing it. Of course, the dead computers don’t show the list of updates anymore.

However, we were able to replicate this issue by deleting the HKLM/BCD00000000 folder in the registry editor.

Sorry if I typed a lot of random pieces of info here, but we are still bleeding. More computers are going down and we have no idea how to stop this.

MountMassive wrote:

The fact that two companies are experiencing the same exact problem tells me that there may be more out there.

However, one company (the hospital) installed the KB, while yours did not.

Has there been any unusual activity in the logs?

Try running this command from the recovery CMD it worked for me:

BCDBoot C:\windows

[Moderator edit] removed html

Andy wrote:

Try running this command from the recovery CMD it worked for me: BCDBoot C:\windows

Note that the drive letter may not be C: in the recovery/repair environment.

You would need to run diskpart then list vol to find the correct letter.

BCDBoot Command-Line Options

@EvilWizard, can you please tell us which ManageEngibne product you use? Is it the AD Self-Service Portal? Or is it Endpoint Central?

I am sure you have reached out to ManageEngine about it. Have they replied to you? Have they given you any solutions yet?

I hope your issue is resolved since you have not replied to this thread.

Our issue continues. We see a few computers die every day. There is no rhyme or reason for this issue.

We would greatly appreciate it if you could share anything about this issue.

Wanted to confirm we are experiencing this on Windows 11 Dell Latitude Laptops and Desktops. Definitely a BCD issue. Have not been able to resurrect one yet. Started about 3 weeks ago and luckily only 5 workstations affected out of 700. We use ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus for patch management.

I just wanted to chime in here. I too have a machine that goes into “Preparing Automatic Repair” when I try to update with KB5036979 (or todays updates). Then it goes to the blue troubleshooting screen.

I did a lot of troubleshooting and the one thing that is different on this install vs my other install (dual-booting in the same machine) is that this one is an upgrade from WIN7 to WIN10. The clean install of WIN10 on the same computer has upgraded with no problems.

Fortunately I have a good backup, so some of the things I have tried include using a different drive, manual installing KB5036979, trying a BCDBoot repair with Macrium Reflect and running an over-the-top repair installation with a Windows Recovery USB Drive (which freezes at 68% every time). Once the update wants to reboot, it only gets to 15% and then boots to the automatic repair screen.

Everything I have tried has failed at this point, so I have paused all updates.

My machine is a homemade I7-6700K 6th gen with a GIGABYTE GA-B250M-DS3H LGA1151 Motherboard and an SSD drive.

Paul T wrote:

Have you tried an “install over the top“?

cheers, Paul

It still hangs at 68%, same result as when I used the USB upgrade method.

Susan Bradley wrote:

That’s pointing to a corrupted BCD file.  Short fix is to reimage and start over.  Longer fix is to investigate/ask of these devices were part of some other boot edit/recovery partition patching program that would triggered this side effect?

Susan Bradley wrote:

Have you done the usual sfc /scannow and dism repair commands?  It sounds more like corruption on the disk.

Yes, plus I used another SSD disk as a test. I actually think this is the BCD thing you mentioned above, but this OS has given me problems in the past (like some apps not loading), which is why I previously clean installed WIN10. I was only keeping this Win7-to-Win10 upgrade available for some applications that have licenses I can’t transfer. But at this point, I’m just going to leave it as is.

This KB5036979 crap has messed up our Win 10. There s/b an easy way to just hit Uninstall # so and so instead of making us go into areas of win we are not skilled in.
Idiots!