Windows 10: Windows Update 1903 gone incredibly wrong. How to restore my system? Any means possible?...

Long story short:


1. Feature update 1903 commenced

2. Reboot

3. Boot device not found... stuck at BIOS

4. With recovery USB, I rearrange disk letters (they were reset based on physical slot number, so my OS-SSD got letter F..

5. I run chkdsk, and bootrec fixmbr, fixboot

6. 'bootrec /scanos' shows Windows installations found: 07. But, 'bcdboot /enum all' finds Windows Boot Loader on the right drive

8. Troubleshoot/ startup repair could not repair anything (srtTrail.txt says boot corrupt)

9. Reboot, see if problem is fixed.

10. It now boots into the right drive! Which is good news. But, I came upon the Windows Update process screen. Saying it was on 30%. Then it gave me a weird error and rebooted. Now when it boots, it comes upon the circling dots loading thingy, and then gives me a popup window :



The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install Windows, click "OK" to restart the computer, and then restart the installation.



Pressing OK will reboot, to the same windows. A loop, in other words.


11. Looking at the files. They are all intact. But my original windows install with my user data is moved to windows.old while the windows folder is barebones without any user data.


12. As a last resort. I put the Windows USB in and went to install. Trying to "Upgrade" my install to 1903 via the Windows installer. But it gave me a weird reason as not to do it. And closed.



A clean install is very inappropriate for me. This Windows install is important since I have configured it extensively (as much as I can) and I don't want to (might not be able to) set paths and variables all over again.


There must be a way to restore Windows.old as my OS. All the files look intact. If this were Linux, I could just easily copy it to my root and boot into it. But with Windows it's so hard to figure out. And why does Microsoft Incorporated take 12GB of my SSD as "recovery partition" when it is completely useless? Recovery could not help me at all with restoring Windows.


Setupact.log https://pastebin.com/Z3vUrALL

Setuperr.log https://pastebin.com/E794YxyK

:)

 

"Downgrade" to "lower" Win10 version by System Restore possible?

No, restore points from a previous version cannot be applied to a newer version. In fact, the question cannot arise because a successful update to the next version will always delete all the previous version's restore points.

If you could indeed do a system restore to an older restore point, then it suggests that the update from 1803 to 1903 had failed and reverted to 1803. The failed update to 1903 would be listed in the Update History. The only way Microsoft offer to go back to 1803 after a successful update to 1903 would be to use 'Go back to the previous version or Windows 10' in Settings > Update & Security > Recovery. This option is only available for 10 days after the update to the new version, after which the backup of the old version will automatically be deleted.

A more useful way to ensure you can go back is to make a system image of the PC with Macrium Reflect Free before attempting the update to 1903. A system image can be restored whenever you want.

 

Windows XP PRO error after restore

System restore is handy when it works like it did for me 2 days ago saving the need to reinstall all of my software as well as windows, id suggest using norton Ghost 12 for an excellent system restore feature.

 

Why did the startup window get cleared?

I didn't missed any step, the list was gone and gone , even after using lot of programs the programs were not listed in that list.