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windows 10 update completely wipes pc

chris@panteg

pfm Member
My wife's pc did an update last night and it's wiped everything! All programmes and drivers gone, we can log into her account only and it's just a black screen.

Another message came up saying we've got important updates blah, blah and now nothing, task manager still functions and we can bring up command prompt but that's it, no system restore available, got Microsoft on the phone now but well I've never seen this before.
 
If you have a command prompt check the prompt should be something like C:\Users\<username> and type dir. If you are lucky you should see your directories and files and that means you can at least get your data if you don't panic and screw up.

Anyway if it comes to the worst you can recover from your image backup no?

Cheers,

DV
 
I had something similar about a year ago. An automatic update meant I could do nothing with my laptop. I used another laptop to e-mail Microsoft who spent 5 minutes trying to tell me I had to pay them £80 for access to technical support. I said that they wrecked my laptop uninvited and they should sort it for free. They agreed.

However it took me and one of their tech guys 4 hours to rebuild it and everything apart from the very basics had gone. I did have backups so it did not take too long after that to get back to where I was.

Not a pleasant experience.
 
The thing is if you have a working command prompt you also have a working operating system. What seems to have failed is the GUI startup process. Someone who knows what they are doing may well be able to recover the system from the command line starting with the 'system restore' command rstrui.exe. Conversely those with little knowledge can screw up. If you don't already have an image backup make one now before anyone makes changes to your disk drive. This is the first thing that I do before attempting to repair friends and neighbours broken systems.

Cheers,

DV
 
That's not available now either, only task manager, everything is completely wiped, no programmes, just the start icon which does nothing, cannot access anything.
 
That's not available now either, only task manager, everything is completely wiped, no programmes, just the start icon which does nothing, cannot access anything.

Go to the M$ site and download the correct iso for your Windows version https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10. Then burn the iso to a DVD (my preference) or a USB stick. You can then boot from this and gain access to the repair tools at bottom left of the install screen. I like using DVDs as they are cheap and can be kept for future use. I still have an XP DVD and have used it to build an XP system in a VM for specialist work.

Cheers,

DV
 
If you've got the Task Manager window up (and nowt else) you could try

File/Run New Task

then type explorer.exe in the box and click OK.
 
My stepson has been on it and he's tried everything, he's pretty savvy, he seems to know what's wrong, he's been on the phone to Microsoft, he's trying to sort out a recovery disc, according to task manager there are no programmes or any history of any?
 
look on the bright side. It's 1995, and now you are free to phone a few pals, organise a BBQ, go chat to your bank manager , write to your auntie about her birthday and never, ever again, listen to or read a politics thread on PFM!
Perfik!
 
Go to the M$ site and download the correct iso for your Windows version https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10. Then burn the iso to a DVD (my preference) or a USB stick. You can then boot from this and gain access to the repair tools at bottom left of the install screen. I like using DVDs as they are cheap and can be kept for future use. I still have an XP DVD and have used it to build an XP system in a VM for specialist work.

Cheers,

DV
We did that and it did not work....
 
We did that and it did not work....

Perhaps you'd like to clarify? What didn't work? I have in the past downloaded the necessary Windows iso files and booted into Windows and used the recovery tools and managed to recover Windows back to operational.

I can't emphasise enough that people should be making image backups. TrueImage is the best and it costs just under £40 for a lifetime license. I have tried many of the freebie backup solutions and some are really excellent but at the end of the day TrueImage works where others fail especially for novice users although it is a feature rich corporate package. If your disk is screwed or died you just boot from DVD/USB and restore the whole image in a few minutes.

Cheers,

DV
 
Had exactly this happen this morning during the 1803 update....Windows offered to roll back the change or I could use one of the two apparently available Win10 installations....all failed, nothing worked.
Even rolling back to a previous image failed.

Luckily I'd updated another matching laptop to an SSD so had that and swapped it over using the correct product key so it's back to Win7.

These latest Win10 update has been a pain on all our computers...not sure why...but this one was clearly the worst.
 
Perhaps you'd like to clarify? What didn't work? I have in the past downloaded the necessary Windows iso files and booted into Windows and used the recovery tools and managed to recover Windows back to operational.



Cheers,

DV
The iso download did not work. I/we had to do all sorts of stuff in BIOS before the iso did work. Nightmare.
 
I read on another forum that this disaster is not that unusual with the latest Win10 update -we seem to have been lucky so far, touch wood - good luck.
 
A member of the Linn forum thinks this has been rushed out, with a fair few problems not yet ironed out. We have a desktop PC and a laptop - both updated fine, although I updated using the downloadable Windows Update Assistant each time rather than Windows Update. The friends who did the same procedure had no problems either.

Mick
 
The iso download did not work. I/we had to do all sorts of stuff in BIOS before the iso did work. Nightmare.

I burned the iso to a DVD as this format works on any machine with an optical drive. At the BIOS splash screen after power on you press the F12 key and if activated (most are) will let you select the boot drive from a list. If not you can activate this in the BIOS settings. The DVD iso then boots into the Windows install screen but you select the repair disk at bottom left of screen. This brings up several tools for debugging Windows including the Command Line Interpreter (CLI) that will let you do almost anything if you know what you are doing.

As ever I always stress that peeps should make an image backup for just this sort of situation. A restore is simple but recovery can be complex and time consuming.

Cheers,

DV
 


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