Windows 10: Total loss of hard drive after downloading and installing windows 10 updates. March 2020

I have a HP notebook 15 laptop a little more than 4 years old, bought it brand new. AMD E1-6010 processor with Radeon R2 graphics 2 GB ram 1 Terabyte HHD HDD installed about a year ago after accidently dropping the notebook on the floor while it was running The notebook has been running fine until last week, I noticed the drive seemed to be constantly working although the machine was essentially doing nothing but sitting, checked to see if was downloading updates but appeared not to be, so I decided it was probably time for a defrag and commenced to doing same HDD was 3% fragmented before starting completed defrag and shut notebook off for the night. The following day the HDD still seemed to be constantly working while sitting on my desk, thought maybe was time to check to see if there was any new windows 10 updates that needed to be installed.


Went to windows update, and was advised there were updates that needed to be installed so I clicked on download updates and left the notebook running and plugged in on the desk. After a while I came back and opened up the screen had gone into rest mode and I noticed something I had not seen before that I can remember anyway On the far right hand side of the taskbar there was a triangle with a yellow dot in it, I clicked on the triangle and it said something like install updates - your computer is badly out of date. So I move over to the windows start icon and click on it. 3 options came up, install updates and restart, install updates and shut down, or shut down. Before I selected anything, I noticed this same yellow dot that had appeared on the other side of the task bar were next to the 2 install options previously mentioned, I selected install and restart. Computer started working on the installation, but when install was finished the computer would not reboot.


Not knowing what else I could do, I booted from a win 10 ISO I downloaded from Microsoft, HDD is essentially empty, it is showing 4 separate partitions on the disk,

Partition 1 is D: drive letter still there but only has 17MB used out of 526MB. Partition 2 is apparently C: but the identifier letter is missing from the 930 GB partition, Partition 3, I have no idea what is on it, also has no identifier letter, but it has used 17MB of the 67MB partition. Partition 4 is labeled Unallocated Space and is 612MB in size, all free.


I went online and it appears a few years back there was some problems with updates wiping out hard drives, so I followed the information and instructions and selected repair my computer option, advanced options, tried to use auto fix, tried manual fix boot mbr options, nothing worked and that's when I noticed there was no drive letter on C and there was no O/S so I stopped. It never dawned on me that pretty much everything was wiped from the drive.


So a couple of questions...

1. Why did this happen, any chance a virus or malware was downloaded with the updates? did that have anything to do with the mysterious yellow dot.

2. Before I reinstall windows 10 should I get a program to wipe the remaining data from the HDD in case its malware, and install the drive letter for C.

3. Will I have to buy an activation code for the newly installed O/S? Or will Microsoft know what I had based on my IP or other identifier?

4. Anything else I have missed?


Would appreciate any help. I waited on M/S Support for nearly 3 hours yesterday to get some help but I finally gave up, as there was no information about where I was in the queue.

:)

 

Cumulative Updates - March 10th 2020

Changelog for Cumulative updates released on March 10th, 2020 are as under:

1. Windows 10 1903 and 1909: KB4540673 (OS Builds
   18362.719)
2. Windows 10 version 1809: KB4538461(OS Build 17763.1098)*

For Windows 10 1903/1909, It is recommended to install servicing stack update KB4541338 before installing the cumulative updates.

Direct Download links

• KB4540673 32-bit update can be downloaded using this
  link and 64-bit can be downloaded from this.
• KB4538461 32-bit link is here and
  the 64-bit link is here.

Servicing Stack Update KB4541338 for Windows 10 1903 and 1909

• Use this link for 32-bit and this
  link for 64-bit download.

Windows 10 update history

https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4529964/windows-10-update-history

Windows 10 release dashboard

Windows 10, version 1903 and Windows Server, version 1903 - Windows Release Information

Follow @WindowsUpdate to find out when new content is published to the release information dashboard.

*Support for Windows 10, version 1809 ends May 12th 2020.

 

Windows 10 forced download

^This, then reboot and go to manually update windows. Find KB3035583 in the list of available updates, right-click and "Hide this update" so it doesn't get installed again next go around.

 

Windows 10 forced download

To stop the download, uninstall the KB3035583 update (under "Control Panel > Windows Update > Installed Updates").


To get rid of the C:\$Windows.~BT folder:

• Right-click on your C: drive.
• Select "Properties".
• Click on [ Disk Cleanup ]
• After the initial scan: If you have a [ Clean up system files ] button, click it and wait for the second scan to finish.
• Scroll down the list and look for "Temporary Windows installation files" (its size should be in the gigabytes range); check the box.
• Click on [ OK ] to start the clean-up.