Did Windows 10 update kill my hard drive?

Dubh Geannain

I've a desktop in work and went home last night while it was running a Windows 10 update. Id started it about an hour before I was due to leafve the office but it was still running when I left. Incidentally, there was also an AVG update that had wanted me to restart my PC for a couple of days.

I came back in this afternoon and the Lenovo icon was on the screen. Restarted and it only get as far as the Lenovo icon again. So I check the BIOS and boot menu. All seems to be in order but it still wouldn't get past the icon.

I popped the hard drive in to a colleagues PC, a dell, which reported no "bootable media."

So next I place it in an external dock via USB. It's appearing there and the system files all seem to still be there. I'm not sure if that rules out a hard drive failure or not, but I'm keen to get all my documents off the drive to elsewhere. however, windows explorer is showing users/user1/documents as empty with a folder size of 0 bytes. I assumed the documents were hidden around user permissions but I haven't exactly figured out yet if that is the problem.

I did manage to access the app data folder, specifically my outlook pst and archive files so that's something. But I would really like to get at the personal docs.

Any thoughts on what's going on or how I can get access to the personal docs (assuming they're still there somewhere)?

I ran a chkdsk on the drive and it didn't report any errors, and am currently running a Recuva deep scan in the hope that it will show me the files and let me copy them off. There's 16 hours left for that to run at the time of typing.

fritzelly

Are you running on some kind of secure network, where updates are approved by the sys admin/shared workspace etc?

Can you boot in to Windows recovery mode?
Safe mode?
Roll back?
Anything?

ED E

chkdsk is destructive, doing that isnt always a good idea.


Sounds like:

A. The update was a build update (1903 in this case), thats the same as fresh install. Every build. MS in its wisdom designed it like that.

B. It failed and destroyed the boot sector.



Your data was moved out to a temp folder while the installation was running, sounds like some was not put back. If you browse to:
C:\Windows.old\Users
you should find your data.



If you dont either W10 screwed up and wiped your system, this has happened before, or the drive may have had a physical failure during the process. Its being thrashed during a feature update so not totally improbable.

Dubh Geannain

fritzelly wrote: »

Are you running on some kind of secure network, where updates are approved by the sys admin/shared workspace etc?

Can you boot in to Windows recovery mode?
Safe mode?
Roll back?
Anything?

Nope nothing.

It's a small office if mostly engineers. We all kind of look after our own PCs. I don't suspect a virus or otherwise but I guess it can never be ruled out.

Dubh Geannain

@ED_E

Thanks. I see that folder. Getting the permissions message again so I'll see if I get around that.

Edit: Maybe not a good idea to try while Recuva is running

Dubh Geannain

@ED_E again.

Many thanks. You have saved me many hours of hurt. There they all are. Phew.

Dubh Geannain

So, the had drive should be okay and something went wrong with the update.

Is there a pain free way of turning the HD back into a bootable, working version of Windows?

ED E

Glad your data is safe. If backups arent in place today is the day




Some W10 installation media (DVD or USB) can be made with the media creation tool on any other W10 box. Boot from that and run auto repair. If its just a boot sector it could quickly restore the installation, or otherwise roll back the update.

Dubh Geannain

ED E wrote: »

Glad your data is safe. If backups arent in place today is the day




Some W10 installation media (DVD or USB) can be made with the media creation tool on any other W10 box. Boot from that and run auto repair. If its just a boot sector it could quickly restore the installation, or otherwise roll back the update.

Thanks. That's tomorrows task. Backing up now. I do back up most stuff but not regularly on some other less critical items and am a month behind on them.

Dubh Geannain

Just reporting back. I created a bootable USB with the intention of repairing the Windows installation on the Hard drive.

I got the usual Lenovo screen as the PC again failed to launch from the primary device. So it moved onto the USB and I get a message asking about removing media to perform a fresh install. I clicked okay and the computer rebooted.

Except, instead of running running the Windows 10 installer it miraculously jumps back to the original update which is now at 86 %. It took another 45 minutes to complete but Windows launched again and everything is where it was.

It's lucky I didn't change to boot drive order but the USB looked to have snapped the update out of whatever error state it was in.

A nice conclusion but I'm now wary of future updates and my hard drive.