J
jnewman67
Guest
I've been noticing this problem since the fall of 2015 - on multiple machines (40+ at least).
I routinely have to reinstall or build Windows 7 (pro or home) machines from scratch - unfortunately, they are rarely the same brand let alone the same family of machines, so I end up having to install them from scratch. There are currently over 200 updates for a fresh build of Windows 7 SP1. I used to be able to just select all the "found" updates in each round of updates, and install them all at one time - long and tedious, but at least I wasn't having to do each one individually!
What I've been finding for the last 6 months or so is that I can get about 75% of them installed now, then randomly, a round of them will cause some type of corruption and during the next reboot, the system(s) will require booting up into System Repair, where they will require a System Restore back to some previous round of updates (not necessarily the last round), which may or may not finish successfully.
I spent 2 full days rebuilding 6 identical laptops 4 different ways, and each time they all crapped out at the same round of updates. After the 3rd attempt, I went through each update of that failing round one at a time, rebooting after each update, and all the machines got corrupted, BUT AFTER DIFFERENT UPDATES! I have not been able to find one update that would constistantly cause the corruption of the system.
Since that time, as a rule, I've taken up turning off Windows Update completely (do not check) on rebuilt machines, then manually checking for updates and installing them at times when I can deal with any corruption that might occur. I've resorted to using 3rd party update utilities to get my machines updated - WUOffline, PortUpdate and AutoPatcher were the 3 I fiddled with the most. WUO does a nice job, but doesn't cover all the updates. AutoPatcher just didn't give the desired results I was looking for, but PortUpdate seemed to work the best, and be relatively easy to use, though just as slow as WU, as it somehow gets the update information from WU directly. PU still requires multiple rounds of updates (search, download, search, install, repeat), but it has worked without fail, and got all the available updates installed without any corruption.
Until yesterday. I started having the same problem again yesterday, using only PortUpdate to bring a machine up to date. It installed 55 updates the first round (this machine had been previously updated, then sat turned off for about a month or two). Round 2 had about 20 updates, and was corrupted when it rebooted.
I've repeated this process 3 times on this particular machine, and it does the same thing each time - making me restore to before the 55 updates were installed. The 3rd time through, I actually rebooted the machine twice between updates, and did some registry and temp file cleaning in between - each reboot was normal between updates, no issues until after updates were installed.
My rebuilt machines run MSSE for antivirus (with scanning disabled), with no other av/malware utilities installed or active - plain, base installs - and this one corrupts repeatedly like I'd been seeing previously. All known Windows 10 GWX updates get uninstalled and blocked from reinstall as well - GWX is not active during these updates.
I've come to the conclusion that the updating that's getting done during the reboot process is probably the cause - the machine will run fine after the updates finish installing, and up until the reboot is done (if it's not done right away - I tested that). I believe that there's something that's occurring during the update/reboot process that isn't finishing correctly and leaving the drive in an unstable state, or is corrupting the registry (or both), leaving the machine in an unbootable condition. I've done manual CHKDSK's on the drives after the corruption and while here might be unreported free space found and fixed, that's not enough of a fix to get the machine booting again. Putting it through the Startup Repair process doesn't fix it either - only the System Restore will get it booting again.
I'd really like to know if anyone else is seeing this happen consistently as well. It takes nearly 2 days to get all the updates installed on a machine without having to do repeated rebuilds because of system corruption. I'd really like to find the cause of this, and find a way around it. It's very frustrating to perform and update and essentially be playing Russian Roulette with your system and data - will it reboot and run, or won't it? There's a good chance it won't, and that's disturbing.
Continue reading...
I routinely have to reinstall or build Windows 7 (pro or home) machines from scratch - unfortunately, they are rarely the same brand let alone the same family of machines, so I end up having to install them from scratch. There are currently over 200 updates for a fresh build of Windows 7 SP1. I used to be able to just select all the "found" updates in each round of updates, and install them all at one time - long and tedious, but at least I wasn't having to do each one individually!
What I've been finding for the last 6 months or so is that I can get about 75% of them installed now, then randomly, a round of them will cause some type of corruption and during the next reboot, the system(s) will require booting up into System Repair, where they will require a System Restore back to some previous round of updates (not necessarily the last round), which may or may not finish successfully.
I spent 2 full days rebuilding 6 identical laptops 4 different ways, and each time they all crapped out at the same round of updates. After the 3rd attempt, I went through each update of that failing round one at a time, rebooting after each update, and all the machines got corrupted, BUT AFTER DIFFERENT UPDATES! I have not been able to find one update that would constistantly cause the corruption of the system.
Since that time, as a rule, I've taken up turning off Windows Update completely (do not check) on rebuilt machines, then manually checking for updates and installing them at times when I can deal with any corruption that might occur. I've resorted to using 3rd party update utilities to get my machines updated - WUOffline, PortUpdate and AutoPatcher were the 3 I fiddled with the most. WUO does a nice job, but doesn't cover all the updates. AutoPatcher just didn't give the desired results I was looking for, but PortUpdate seemed to work the best, and be relatively easy to use, though just as slow as WU, as it somehow gets the update information from WU directly. PU still requires multiple rounds of updates (search, download, search, install, repeat), but it has worked without fail, and got all the available updates installed without any corruption.
Until yesterday. I started having the same problem again yesterday, using only PortUpdate to bring a machine up to date. It installed 55 updates the first round (this machine had been previously updated, then sat turned off for about a month or two). Round 2 had about 20 updates, and was corrupted when it rebooted.
I've repeated this process 3 times on this particular machine, and it does the same thing each time - making me restore to before the 55 updates were installed. The 3rd time through, I actually rebooted the machine twice between updates, and did some registry and temp file cleaning in between - each reboot was normal between updates, no issues until after updates were installed.
My rebuilt machines run MSSE for antivirus (with scanning disabled), with no other av/malware utilities installed or active - plain, base installs - and this one corrupts repeatedly like I'd been seeing previously. All known Windows 10 GWX updates get uninstalled and blocked from reinstall as well - GWX is not active during these updates.
I've come to the conclusion that the updating that's getting done during the reboot process is probably the cause - the machine will run fine after the updates finish installing, and up until the reboot is done (if it's not done right away - I tested that). I believe that there's something that's occurring during the update/reboot process that isn't finishing correctly and leaving the drive in an unstable state, or is corrupting the registry (or both), leaving the machine in an unbootable condition. I've done manual CHKDSK's on the drives after the corruption and while here might be unreported free space found and fixed, that's not enough of a fix to get the machine booting again. Putting it through the Startup Repair process doesn't fix it either - only the System Restore will get it booting again.
I'd really like to know if anyone else is seeing this happen consistently as well. It takes nearly 2 days to get all the updates installed on a machine without having to do repeated rebuilds because of system corruption. I'd really like to find the cause of this, and find a way around it. It's very frustrating to perform and update and essentially be playing Russian Roulette with your system and data - will it reboot and run, or won't it? There's a good chance it won't, and that's disturbing.
Continue reading...
