Windows Win Update seems to have created a 2.5" paperweight

Afternoon all!

Am trying to help out a neighbour who appears to have suffered the unfortunate issue of having had Windows Update invalidate his Crucial MX500. He updated the other day through normal channels but since then has become stuck in a BSOD loop. None of the recovery options appear to work (we've tried most of them), he can't get into safe mode, strangely and he gets a BSOD error (0xc021a) when he does leave it to try and boot to Windows - the logo appears, the dots spin, then the BSOD, followed by a reboot to the automatic repair options.

I've looked that error message up as it was new to me and it does seem to be a fairly recent one according to some sites, related to Windows security logon services.

Things he's tried (although I'd have to check to see if a complete list):

• uninstalling updates (via advanced boot options)
• system restore (via advanced boot options) but no system image to recover
• start-up repair (via advanced boot options)
• restore registry backup DOS trick (I'd need to confirm, but I think this might be the one where you rename the old reg file to "old" or "backup" or similar and let it rebuild)
• changing startup settings to safe mode and low res
• all external devices unplugged
• recovery mode (?)

Only options left appear to be to remove everything or keep only the files, both of which he's reluctant to do as he uses it for music production and it will lose his workstation settings/templates etc.. He's managed to copy most of the stuff he needed from the SSD by booting the old HDD that it replaced (no such issue with this drive) and moving things over.

Anyone got any additional suggestions we can look at?

Thanks in advance!

 

Do you not have Roll Back as an advanced option? Failing that, you could try a manual upgrade from a Windows 10(?) USB stick which might work. The registry restore likely won't work given it sounds like it's a knackered update. Is the SSD ok just out of interest? Health?
There are a couple of other tricks which might work, but they're more involved. We could try rebuilding the BCD if you'd like?

 

Thanks noiz, as always.

Is Roll Back different to system restore? If it is, whereabouts is it in the advanced options? The SSD was only bought in about Aug last year, so it should be fine, but we could run a health check on it using the HDD to boot from - I assume Crystal Disk Info for this. I'll also get him to try the upgrade from USB - what are the steps to rebuild the BCD?

Cheers!

 

Yeah Roll Back uninstalls the most recent version number changing update, but if it isn't immediately obvious then it won't be there unfortunately. I like SSD-Z but anything that can read SSD health should be good.

Rebuilding the BCD needs you to boot from USB stick as well but after choosing a language, hit Shift+F10 to open command prompt. You'll then need to enter the following.

Code:

diskpart
list vol

Take note of the volume numbers for both the Windows partition and the SYSTEM partition. We're going to assign W to the Windows partition and S to the SYSTEM partition. "x" = Windows volume number, "y" = SYSTEM volume number.

Code:

sel vol x
assign letter=W
sel vol y
assign letter=S
clean
format quick fs=fat32 (this will be NTFS for legacy boot environments. It should say which one in the output from list vol).
exit
bcdboot w:\windows /s s: /all
wpeutil reboot

Good luck

 

Cheers Noiz - have passed this on, so once I hear back with an update, I'll post results

 

To close this one out, we unfortunately tried almost everything but with no luck. Sys restore didn't work, creating a media tool and trying to repair/upgrade Windows failed at different stages each time (message saying required files not available, for some reason) so the decision was made to restore from the HDD and not spend any more time trying to recover the OS on the SSD. All the files and data were fortunately recovered from the SSD prior, so after a re-clone of the HDD back to the SSD it was just apps and settings that were lost in the re-imaging, but these have now been brought back up as well after some work.

Would like to say thanks @noizdaemon666 for all input with this one - much appreciated

 

Thanks for updating @ModSquid

Looks like it was a good outcome after a bit of faffing, the best you could hope for by the sounds of it.