Win10 Anniversary cumulative update KB 3213986 triggers System Restore error 0x80070091

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There’s a fix, but it ain’t pretty.

[See the full post at: Win10 Anniversary cumulative update KB 3213986 triggers System Restore error 0x80070091]

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Fred

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The things found so far has been documented at Windows 10 Update KB3213986 kills system restore. I guess, Woody will sum it up later.

Ex Microsoft Windows (Insider) MVP, Microsoft Answers Community Moderator, Blogger, Book author

https://www.borncity.com/win/

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But there is another crude thing – it seems that WSUS is broken. I’ve published some details here: Windows 10 Update KB4013868: Is Microsoft’s WSUS broken?

Ex Microsoft Windows (Insider) MVP, Microsoft Answers Community Moderator, Blogger, Book author

https://www.borncity.com/win/

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That’s very strange. I posted about it here, and also submitted a note to the patchmanagement.org mailing list. Hope that turns up something.

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woody wrote:

There’s a fix, but it ain’t pretty. [See the full post at: Win10 Anniversary cumulative update KB 3213986 triggers System Restore error 0x80070091]

wow, y’re making me happy again , gives somethings to do

* _ ... _ *

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This is probably worst “OS” ever, or at least very close to what Vista was when it was released.

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Even for Win 7, System Restore is well-known to be quite unreliable, ie the system often could not be restored to a past restore point. System Images are much more reliable/dependable.
At least for the very stable Win 7 of pre-Oct 2016, buggy updates were few and far between.
I think System Restore was more reliable in Win XP.

Seems, some Win 10 users(= beta-testers) hv become very reliant/dependent on System Restore to save them from some of the many buggy updates of M$-Win 10.

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PhotM

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woody wrote:

There’s a fix, but it ain’t pretty.

???

All I see in that article are 4 of what honestly look more like shots in the dark than “fixes” to me. Item 2 has some merit.

For folks having System Restore failures:

Have you tried doing the System Restore from a bootup WinRE (recovery environment)? That way works for me a lot better than trying to initiate it on a running system.

See below for some guidance as to how to get into it…

-Noel

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rc primak

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Yes, but are you running Win10 1607 with KB 321398?

Brings up an interesting point – do all 1607 users with KB 3213986 encounter this problem?

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No problems, and I have installed all available CUs on both my 32-bits WIMBoot tablet and my regular PC (64-bits). Maybe certain software/hardware configurations get hit?

-- rc primak

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From what I found out (also from comments received from German readers), two apps – EarTrumpet and Office Hub – seems to be involved, It seems that the sub folder VFS (for virtual file system content) contains NTFS links that could not be written back. We suppose, that this could be the reason for the issue.

One reader informed me today, that EarTrumpet app has been updated, so the VFS folder has been gone.

Ex Microsoft Windows (Insider) MVP, Microsoft Answers Community Moderator, Blogger, Book author

https://www.borncity.com/win/

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Noel Carboni wrote:

woody wrote:

There’s a fix, but it ain’t pretty.

??? All I see in that article are 4 of what honestly look more like shots in the dark than “fixes” to me. Item 2 has some merit. For folks having System Restore failures: Have you tried doing the System Restore from a bootup WinRE (recovery environment)? That way works for me a lot better than trying to initiate it on a running system. See below for some guidance as to how to get into it… -Noel     

Well, your right – at the time I wrote the first version of this article, I’ve had no clue, that I would get in touch with this error. So Fixes #1 – #4 was a “shot in the dark” . Then I developed #fix 5 and provided all fixes to users asked for help in German Microsoft Answers forum.

They came back, that Windows PE system restore didn’t help. And they came back, that renaming folder WindowsApps brought system restore back to operation. Later on, I became involved in the discussion held at US MS answers forum (linked within my blog post), where the command prompt command sequence was refined.

Within my German blog post I received first hints, that it could have something to do with January 2017 update.

And if you ever tried to nail down a system restore error, perhaps you are aware, that it may take 1-2 hours for a test run. So the final fix and the explanation, that KB 3213986 is involved is the result of many hours of testing from several users (including me).

That’s in short the whole story (but I have also to confess, that my two articles, one in German and one in English are getting slight different in time, due to the fact, that the whole case was a kind of ‘moving target’ over the time) …

Ex Microsoft Windows (Insider) MVP, Microsoft Answers Community Moderator, Blogger, Book author

https://www.borncity.com/win/

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anonymous wrote:

Even for Win 7, System Restore is well-known to be quite unreliable, ie the system often could not be restored to a past restore point. System Images are much more reliable/dependable.

I quite agree, anybody relying on anything MS in the Recovery/Restore/Restset/Refresh areas will EVENTUALLY go a sorrowing…. MS software will let you down at the worst possible times!!! It happened to me in W 7 when I was attending “The School of Hard Knocks” as well when I graduated to W 8 and Under Studying in W 8.1/W 10.0. That LIFE School is quite a school!
Why, because MS has everything to think about not just bailing you out of the soup. Independent 3 rd party companies that are really professional, have good track records and reputation, can’t afford allot of their users to have failures.

With 3 rd party software, what I have found to greatly improve reliability is to avoid (MS W) VSS by using the W PE, and backup at boot when the PE OS is only using memory and not relying on the OS that one is trying to Image Backup. There are other approaches, offline Backup or an alternative to VSS, but the PE OS method, I found absolutely, always reliable for me through the undulations of the IP W 10 OS development especially to do with APPX.

anonymous wrote:

Seems, some Win 10 users(= beta-testers) hv become very reliant/dependent on System Restore to save them from some of the many buggy updates of M$-Win 10.

Image Backup. Backup. Backup. your OS Image!!! if you are going to rely on correcting the Registry for some of the small problems then do this as well: Tweaking.com Registry Backup When ever I have required a refresh/Recovery of my Registry this has always been reliable for me, UNLESS the Image was just to corrupt!!!

This is what I use for my Image Backups: Paragon SSD and HDD Backup and Management Tools Free and Paid

As always and this can’t be said enough, Their are no quarantines (Ed: did you mean guarantees?) in LIFE or Computers except Death….

--------------------------------------

1. Tower Totals: 2xSSD ~512GB, 2xHHD 20 TB, Memory 32GB

SSDs: 6xOS Partitions, 2xW8.1 Main & Test, 2x10.0 Test, Pro, x64

CPU i7 2600 K, SandyBridge/CougarPoint, 4 cores, 8 Threads, 3.4 GHz
Graphics Radeon RX 580, RX 580 ONLY Over Clocked
More perishable

2xMonitors Asus DVI, Sony 55" UHD TV HDMI

1. NUC 5i7 2cores, 4 Thread, Memory 8GB, 3.1 GHz, M2SSD 140GB
1xOS W8.1 Pro, NAS Dependent, Same Sony above.

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rc primak

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I have always thought that System Restore has been deprecated in Windows 10 as is provided in the OS “as is”, without guarantees.
Doesn’t System Restore come as disabled out of the box on a clean install?
I would like to see it go entirely, as it causes a lot of confusion and is used abusively by many users who don’t understand that it is supposed to be the last resort tool to be used.
Even so, a full backup is a lot more useful.

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Yes, it is disabled out of the box. MS would prefer we would Reset our devices nowadays. On the limited storage of phones and tablets, this makes sense, but not on full laptops and PCs.

Also, if File History is enabled on a dedicated external drive, your data should be backed up continuously. That’s also how MS wants us to do things these days.

I use Macrium Reflect Free and its WinPE 10 Rescue Media (USB) environment to make pre-Patch Tuesday and mid-month System Image Backups. (Full or Increment would work just fine.)

I do not trust System Restore if even one driver has been updated, or if there’s some sort of Platform Stability patch in there. These things affect Devices and Drivers irreversibly in some cases. WIMBoot devices seldom survive a System Restore in my experience. (YMMV)

-- rc primak

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ch100

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I have just encountered this error a few days ago after having a problem with an windows store application. Now many of windows store apps in my laptop can’t run normally. So far, i have been searching a possible solution for my problem. All i have received is helpless answers that told me to do the things making the problem worse. Since I can not use system restore, the damage to my system is irreversible without reinstalling the whole system.

 

 

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Depending on the extent of the MS Store Apps damages, you may need to reinstall the Store itself. I presume you tried the tips here:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-reinstall-default-apps-in-windows-10/

or similar, and they failed. (This happened to me once on a WIMBoot Tablet.)

And of course, you used the Store Reset Tool built into Windows 10 AU (v.1607).

And the Diagnostic and Repair Tool from here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/69e76f90-d54c-44cf-9851-c2d1542790db/run-the-troubleshooter-for-windows-apps

All of which may fail. I did have to reinstall Windows 10 on my tablet due to the sorts of damages you may be encountering. It wasn’t pretty, but at least my data were backed up and up to date. This was when I started seriously considering running File History for the tablet.

-- rc primak

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I have done all things above but the problem can’t be resolved by troubleshooting or reinstalling windows store apps. In the task manager, the ShellExperienceHost.exe is suspended. I think I’d better wait the new major patch from MS.

 

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I can’t even tell if I have KB 3213986 on Win10Pro v1607!  It’s not there in Control Panel, View Installed Updates.  Also not in the Settings>Update History by number but there is an unnumbered “Feature” update installed January 20.

2 questions:

1. Is there any other way to tell if I received it?
2. What’s the likelihood that Redmond will fix it?

Thanks in advance.
<h2></h2>

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CyGuy wrote:

I can’t even tell if I have KB 3213986 on Win10Pro v1607!

In the taskbar search box, type winver. click on it.
If you have version 14393.693 you have KB3213986

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CyGuy

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No chance that Redmond fixes this??

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