Newsletter Archives

• 2020’s Windows 10 2004

  Posted on April 27, 2020 at 01:15 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums
  

  WINDOWS 10

  By Susan Bradley

  Well, it’s that time of year! Microsoft releases a new version of Windows 10 … and we promptly put it off for as long as we can.

  Or at least until we know it’s stable and thoroughly tested. As you might expect, I’m going to recommend that you don’t install this latest feature update when Microsoft first offers it. Instead, I regard a new Win10 release as an occasion to take a brief time-out — a moment to take stock of what versions I’m running at home and at the office, and to decide whether it’s time to upgrade to a newer but thoroughly vetted version.

  A brand-new Win10 is also a reminder that I need to download and save the latest Win10 install/recovery ISO.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.16.0 (2020-04-27).

  Windows 10 Releases AskWoody Plus Newsletter, feature update, System maintenance, Win10 2004, Win10 20H1

• When Windows 10 Feature Updates don’t go smoothly

  Posted on November 15, 2019 at 21:45 CST by Kirsty • Comment in the Forums

  Last weekend, I decided to bite the bullet and update a Win10-1803 Pro machine to Win10-1809, using Windows Update. I’d taken a system image backup, and as it wasn’t my production machine, I wasn’t too worried.

  This machine is under a year old, a purchase necessary when a hardware failure put paid to my trusty Win7 Pro laptop. It allows me to work more than I can manage at my desktop, and does most of the hard yards online, especially here.

  Windows Update installed 1809 x64 2019-10B – this was before Woody changed MS-Defcon from 4 to 2. It took 20 minutes to Prepare to Install, and nearly 2 hours to download, and several hours to install.

  Needless to say, it didn’t go to plan… The first indication of a problem was after several hours of installing, when a blue screen appeared bearing the words “Stopcode” and “Bad Pool Header”. It restarted, still on 1803, pending install. It continued installing. Eventually it restarted, and I was able to see KB 4521862 and KB 4519338 had installed – along with a bunch of drivers being updated, when the Pro settings were not to download drivers from Windows. I also noticed I hadn’t had to reset the Metered Connection settings to allow the update to download!

  After it finished its update, it wasn’t working properly. It looked fairly normal, but restarting started problems – none of the visible desktop items actually worked – not the Start button, any of the TaskBar icons, or anything other than the Ctrl>Alt>Del routine.

  I tried Sign Out. It took ages. It caused a loop of: Hi; We’re getting everything ready for you; This might take several minutes – don’t turn off your PC (that part remained until it got to Hi again); Leave everything to us; Windows stays up to date to help protect you in an online world; Making sure your apps are good to go; It’s taking a bit longer than expected, but we’ll get there as fast as we can. This loop took 5 minutes to restart, again, and again, and again.

  It had been over 12 hours since the process started at this point. As I had to do my day job, I just left it chugging away in the background while I got on with earning an income. Over 5 hours later, it finally came up for air – a desktop, but still not functioning.

  Along the way, I saw various errors:
  Error 0x80072EE7
  The gpsvc service failed the sign-in – access is denied
  windows\system32\config\systemprofile\desktop is unavailable

  To add to my woes, it wanted to restart itself again, where it re-entered the 5+ hour loop. I still had work to get done, so I just let it be. No stopcodes this time, but still it didn’t work.

  I couldn’t access safe mode, even with Recovery Tool USB access. Start Up Repair “couldn’t fix [the] PC”. Using the Recovery Tool, I was able to access the Command Prompt, where SFC /SCANNOW reported “Not enough memory resources are available to process this command” the first time, and then, after it went through 100%, “Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation”. Attempting to use Restore Points was another failure – they were listed, but “unavailable”.

  At this time, I decided it was time to try to restore the system image. Again, the gpsvc error. Apparently there had been some issue prior to the update attempt? I had to put it aside for a few days, until I got time to address it properly. By this stage, I was heading for an ISO file on a USB stick. This laptop now needs to be reset from the ground up, going back over all the metered connection, deferred updates, Customer Experience, Start Menu apps settings etc. etc. etc. – and I’m sure there’ll be something important I forget!

  Having got the ISO installed, I was able to run SFC / SCANNOW and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. All 100% clear, thank goodness.

  There are only 5-6 programs to reinstall. If this had been a production machine, I’d have dozens of programs to have to reinstall. It’s still going to take another day or two until I get it back to normal, as I have other things I need to prioritize. If I’m a bit cranky this weekend, you now know why!

  I’m really lucky I have a wealth of knowledge, support and expertise here at my disposal. A normal home user would have ended up paying for professional technical support, and if it had been my production machine, would have resulted in a loss of chargeable hours. I’m counting my blessings!

  Upgrading, Windows 10 feature update, ISO, Windows Update

• Another report of Win10 Creators Update (1703) users getting pushed to Fall Creators Update (1709), even with defer updates set

  Posted on January 12, 2018 at 11:38 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  If you’re using Win10 1703, and you want to wait a bit to move to 1709, there may be a problem.

  Yesterday, Microsoft announced that 1709 is “fully available for all compatible devices running Windows 10 worldwide!” (their exclamation point, not mine). Gregg Keizer has the details.

  What I’m hearing – and can’t yet confirm – is that 1703 PCs with “feature update deferral” set to 365 days are getting pushed onto 1709.

  Computerworld Woody on Windows.

  UPDATE: Here’s another report of a “hard” bug in 1709:

  Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is hit by a new bug that prevents installation, especially for devices with Intel’s X299 chipset and an NVMe SSD drive.

  Thx SB.

  Windows Patches/Security feature update, forced upgrading, Win10 1703, Win10 1709