General Discussions

kingfish · ‎03-12-2019

More "help" from Microsoft....

Microsoft implemented a new troubleshooting step recently in Windows 10 that improves the operating system's handling of startup problems.

Windows 10 may uninstall recently installed operating system updates automatically to address startup issues as a last resort if all other steps to fix the issue fail.

Startup problems are one of the most frustrating issues that Windows users may experience. One of the big issues for users is that they have only a few options at their disposal to fix the issue: using built-in troubleshooting options, recovery disks or tools, or restoring backups of the system if they do exist.

Updates can be the source of startup problems. Updates may cause bluescreens or other startup related issues that prevent the system from booting.

To name just a few recent incidents:

We removed some recently installed updates

Windows 10 may remove recently installed updates as part of a troubleshooting process to restore proper startup behavior.

The operating system informs the user about the removal of updates on the next successful start:

We removed some recently installed updates to recover your device from a startup failure.

Microsoft notes on a support page that this is done only if all other attempts to recover the boot process and system start fail.

Updates removed in the process will be blocked for 30 days automatically to avoid the issue from happening again. Blocked updates will be downloaded and installed again after the 30-day period, and that may mean that the issue is experienced again if Microsoft did not resolve it in the time.

Administrators who want to block the update continuously may use Microsoft's update blocking tool to do so.

Closing Words

Automatic recovery is great if it works and the new update removal option is certainly a welcome addition to the automatic recovery process. The option speeds up the recovery if it works.

The new option may resolve some issues automatically but it certainly is not a catch-all option that recovery any issue that is update related.

Administrators still need to use advanced troubleshooting tools or recovery images to restore a system to a working state if automatic recovery fails.

Windows may uninstall updates that cause startup problems - gHacks Tech News

black_zion · ‎03-12-2019

It's been several years now since Windows 10 came out, and I haven't seen any articles discussing why Windows 10's updates are such a cluster when 98-8.1's, even though they had an occasional bad patch requiring a silver bullet, were so stable, and those didn't even have the benefit of unpaid volunteer alpha and beta testers the way Windows 10 does along with all the telemetry they collect that not even enterprise users can kill, especially when so many updates cause such widespread, blatant issues, it's impossible to believe they're not being reported in the insider phase. I doubt it's the cumulative nature, since Microsoft shifted Windows 7 to that long ago, and it's not the massive feature updates, Microsoft did that with Service Packs for years with only minimal issues (I say minimal mostly because Windows 8's "service pack", 8.1, cannot physically be installed on some systems).