Windows 10: Windows Update - Windows 10 1809

After the recent Microsoft update, my old desktop computer would boot Windows to the login screen but when attempting to log in with any profile, would hang trying to update the profile (any profile).

If you have had similar issues or are knowledgeable in the Windows 10 update failures and related saga, please take a few minutes and review the following information. Please let me know if you have some ideas about why the update keeps failing.

Each of the three iterations of Windows 10 Update 1809 have failed this way - the first in November, the second in January, and this time, the third iteration around the beginning of April. Each appeared to succeed (Windows thinks it successfully applied) but it clearly failed and had to be rolled back as logins would never complete and safe mode would also not work (assuming same profile issue). The only workable solution (other than completely formatting and starting anew) seems to be to roll back to the working 1803 state.

Here are the system details in no particular organized fashion.

The computer is an older AM2 AMD Phenom II X6 1090T with a Gigabyte mother board (onboard AMD Radeon 4200), a PCI-E AMD Radeon HD 5770, and 8 GB of RAM.

The system still ranks solidly on Passmark.org (cpubenchmark.net) testing and seems to perform well.

The OS began as a clean Windows 10 Update 1703 install after the SSD was added.

The update to 1803 went smoothly. The update to 1809, not so much.

There are several disks and partitions including an old Windows disk to read some legacy data (it was added between the second failed update and the third).

The main disk is an SSD, others are HDD...here is the layout:

C volume details

DISKPART> detail volume

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
* Disk 0 Online 223 GB 450 MB

Read-only : No
Hidden : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy : No
Offline : No
BitLocker Encrypted : No
Installable : Yes

Volume Capacity : 222 GB
Volume Free Space : 96 GB

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 F DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 G DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 2 System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy System
* Volume 3 C NTFS Partition 222 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 4 D DATADSK NTFS Partition 931 GB Healthy
Volume 5 E E NTFS Partition 465 GB Healthy
Volume 6 H OS NTFS Partition 917 GB Healthy
Volume 7 WINRETOOLS NTFS Partition 851 MB Healthy
Volume 8 Image NTFS Partition 12 GB Healthy
Volume 9 ESP FAT32 Partition 500 MB Healthy Hidden

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
* Disk 0 Online 223 GB 450 MB
Disk 1 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB
Disk 3 Online 931 GB 0 B *
We have five user profiles and have turned on parental controls to manage access for two of the profiles.

The parental controls seem to cause a Shell error on boot for all user profiles (started after the 1803 update) as the controls seem to treat all profiles as kid profiles. The error seems to source from a COM object permission related to the parental controls and does not seem to impact overall activities after displaying.

Overall, the software loaded is vanilla (Office365, Google Chrome, Firefox, Trend Micro Maximum Security, etc).

The Device Manager is kept fairly clean with occasional reviews for ghosted devices (removable disks, external USB devices, and any misbehaving devices).

Overall, the 1803 state has been working fairly stably and no major issues seem to be causing grief (other than the 1809 update).

During round 2, I went to some rather extensive lengths to try to get the 1809 update to fix or run to completion (trying to fix the profiles, disabling the AV and rerunning the update, etc) to no avail.

I suspect I'm not alone in having issues with this Windows update and have to say that overall, being a long-time server and desktop admin, I'm rather disappointed with what appears to be the increasing frequency of failures on the desktop side of the house (not just with basic Windows updates).

Again, if you have ideas and/or suggestions about how to help the system run the update successfully to completion (including updating the profiles), I'd love to hear them.

:)

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Windows 10 Update

Well just noticed a pretty large one pop up coming in at 914MB, seems it makes some pretty serous updates.

KB3172985
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3172985

This security update includes improvements and fixes in the functionality of Windows 10 Version 1511 and Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4. It also resolves the following vulnerabilities in Windows:

• 3175677 MS16-094: Security update for secure boot: July 12, 2016
• 3174060 MS16-093: Security update for Adobe Flash Player: July 12, 2016
• 3171910 MS16-092: Security update for Windows Kernel: July 12, 2016
• 3170048 MS16-091: Security update for .Net Framework: July 12, 2016
• 3171481 MS16-090: Security update for Kernel Mode Drivers: July 12, 2016
• 3170050 MS16-089: Security update for Windows secure kernel mode: July 12, 2016
• 3170005 MS16-087: Security update for the Microsoft Print Spooler: July 12, 2016
• 3169999 MS16-085: Cumulative security update for Microsoft Edge: July 12, 2016
• 3169991 MS16-084: Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer: July 12, 2016

 

Microsoft to make Windows 10 updates mandatory

Well, at the moment at least, you can choose to defer upgrades. Under Settings > Windows Updates > Advanced options you need to check the box labeled "Defer upgrades". What does that do? Good question. The answer I've found might illuminate it to a degree.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/defer-upgrades-in-windows-10

I hear this only applies to Pro and Enterprise editions. But I can't verify that.