I have never ever had a problem with a patch Tuesday update, at least not to the point where my system could no longer boot. Every month I seem to read about some people who have major problems with an update, but it always seems to be some obscure issue that affects only a relatively small number of people.
Today was my turn.
The funny thing is that every month, I typically wait a few days before allowing the patch to be applied to my systems just to see if I hear anything about any issues. This month, as always, I temporarily turned off Windows update, but I accidentally forgot to do this on my primary laptop. As a result, the updates got applied to my laptop, but it resulted in bluescreen failure on startup with the failure being reported in TCPIP.SYS.
Windows first tried to perform an automatic recovery but failed. I tried a lot of additional things:
Safe Mode - failed
Safe Mode with Command Prompt - failed
Recovery point - there was a recovery point from before the updates were installed, but this too failed.
I finally got to a point where I had to try a "Reset this PC" option, and I was rather surprised at how well this worked.
Reset this PC now gives you the option to pull Windows files down from the cloud or to simply use your local files. I thought I'd just try the local files and that worked.
When it was done, I was caught a little bit by surprise because it immediately logged me in using Windows Hello facial recognition. I hadn't realized that this data would be maintained. Every single one of my desktop items and personal documents and files were there. I'm having to reinstall my programs, but that's really not that big a deal.
Just to tempt fate, and because I'm that person who's going to push the button after me someone tells me not to, I installed the April patch again. This time it installed without any difficulties. Go figure.
For anyone interested, my C: drive with Windows on it is BitLocker encrypted. I had to enter my recovery key each time I booted the system when trying various tasks such as safe mode, etc. but after the final Reset This PC operation, BitLocker remained enabled so none of data was ever unencrypted even with the whole recovery process.
While I certainly wasn't thrilled about the initial problem, I was pretty impressed with how Windows was able to recover from this situation. It was my first time ever going through that process.
I'm absolutely great at doing backups so my total loss would have been only about one hour of work, but this was still a worthwhile experience to go through just to experience how it all worked.
Today was my turn.
The funny thing is that every month, I typically wait a few days before allowing the patch to be applied to my systems just to see if I hear anything about any issues. This month, as always, I temporarily turned off Windows update, but I accidentally forgot to do this on my primary laptop. As a result, the updates got applied to my laptop, but it resulted in bluescreen failure on startup with the failure being reported in TCPIP.SYS.
Windows first tried to perform an automatic recovery but failed. I tried a lot of additional things:
Safe Mode - failed
Safe Mode with Command Prompt - failed
Recovery point - there was a recovery point from before the updates were installed, but this too failed.
I finally got to a point where I had to try a "Reset this PC" option, and I was rather surprised at how well this worked.
Reset this PC now gives you the option to pull Windows files down from the cloud or to simply use your local files. I thought I'd just try the local files and that worked.
When it was done, I was caught a little bit by surprise because it immediately logged me in using Windows Hello facial recognition. I hadn't realized that this data would be maintained. Every single one of my desktop items and personal documents and files were there. I'm having to reinstall my programs, but that's really not that big a deal.
Just to tempt fate, and because I'm that person who's going to push the button after me someone tells me not to, I installed the April patch again. This time it installed without any difficulties. Go figure.
For anyone interested, my C: drive with Windows on it is BitLocker encrypted. I had to enter my recovery key each time I booted the system when trying various tasks such as safe mode, etc. but after the final Reset This PC operation, BitLocker remained enabled so none of data was ever unencrypted even with the whole recovery process.
While I certainly wasn't thrilled about the initial problem, I was pretty impressed with how Windows was able to recover from this situation. It was my first time ever going through that process.
I'm absolutely great at doing backups so my total loss would have been only about one hour of work, but this was still a worthwhile experience to go through just to experience how it all worked.
My Computers
System One System Two
-
- OS
- Windows 11 21H2
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Manufacturer/Model
- Home Built
- CPU
- Intel i7-11700K
- Motherboard
- ASUS Prime Z590-A
- Memory
- 128GB Crucial Ballistix 3200MHz DRAM
- Graphics Card(s)
- No GPU - CPU graphics only (for now)
- Sound Card
- Realtek (on motherboard)
- Monitor(s) Displays
- HP Envy 32
- Screen Resolution
- 2560 x 1440
- Hard Drives
-
1 x 1TB NVMe Gen 4 x 4 SSD
1 x 2TB NVMe Gen 3 x 4 SSD
2 x 512GB 2.5" SSDs
2 x 8TB HD
- PSU
- Corsair HX850i
- Case
- Corsair iCue 5000X RGB
- Cooling
- Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black cooler + 10 case fans
- Keyboard
- CODE backlit mechanical keyboard
- Mouse
- Logitech MX Master 3
- Internet Speed
- 300Mb down / 20Mb up
- Browser
- Chromium Edge
- Antivirus
- Windows Defender
- Other Info
-
Additional options installed:
WiFi 6E PCIe adapter
ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 PCIe adapter
-
- Operating System
- Windows 11 21H2
- Computer type
- Laptop
- Manufacturer/Model
- HP Spectre x360 15-BL012DX
- CPU
- Intel i7-7500U
- Memory
- 32GB
- Graphics card(s)
- Dual Intel HD 620 and Nvidia GeForce 940MX
- Sound Card
- Built-in Realtek HD Audio
- Monitor(s) Displays
- 4k 15-inch
- Screen Resolution
- 4k (3840 x 2160)
- Hard Drives
- 1TB Seagate FireCuda 510 NVMe SSD
- Internet Speed
- 300Mb down / 20Mb up
- Browser
- Chromium Edge
- Antivirus
- Windows Defender
- Other Info
- RAM Upgraded from 16GB to 32GB WiFi Upgraded from WiFi 5 to WiFi 6 SSD upgraded from 512GB NVMe SSD to 1TB Seagate FireCuda 510 NVMe SSD
.
