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
- Win11 Pro 24H2
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Manufacturer/Model
- Self-built
- CPU
- Intel i7 11700K
- Motherboard
- ASUS Prime Z590-A MB
- Memory
- 64GB (Waiting for warranty replacement of another 64GB for 128GB total)
- Graphics Card(s)
- No GPU - Built-in Intel Graphics
- Sound Card
- Integrated
- Monitor(s) Displays
- HP Envy 32
- Screen Resolution
- 2560 x 1440
- Hard Drives
- 1 x 1TB NVMe SSD
1 x 2TB NVMe SSD
1 x 4TB NVMe SSD
3 x 512GB 2.5" SSD
1 x 4TB 2.5" SSD
5 x 8TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
- PSU
- Corsair HX850i
- Case
- Corsair iCUE RGB 5000X mid tower case
- Cooling
- Noctua NF-S12A chromax.black.swap case fans (Qty. 7) & Home Computer Specifications, Configuration, and Usage Notes General Specifications ASUS Prime Z590-A motherboard, serial number M1M0KC222467ARP Intel Core i7-11700K CPU (11th Gen Rocket Lake / LGA 1200 Socket) 128GB Crucial Ballistix RGB DDR4 3200 MHz DRAM (4 x 32GB) Corsair iCUE RGB 5000X mid tower case Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black CPU cooler Noctua NF-S12A chromax.black.swap case fans (Qty. 7) & Corsair LL-120 RGB Fans (Qty. 3)
- Keyboard
- Corsair K70 Max RGB Magnetic Keyboard
- Mouse
- Logitech MX Master 3
- Internet Speed
- 1Gb Up / 1 Gb Down
- Browser
- Edge
- Antivirus
- Windows Defender
- Other Info
- The five 8TB drives and three 512GB SSDs are part of a DrivePool using StableBit DrivePool software. The three SSDs are devoted purely to caching for the 8TB drives. All of the important data is stored in triplicate so that I can withstand simultaneous failure of 2 disks.
Networking: 2.5Gbps Ethernet and WiFi 6e
-
- Operating System
- Win11 Pro 23H2
- Computer type
- Laptop
- Manufacturer/Model
- Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 2
- CPU
- Intel i7-1255U
- Memory
- 16 GB
- Graphics card(s)
- Intel Iris Xe Graphics
- Sound Card
- Realtek® ALC3306-CG codec
- Monitor(s) Displays
- 13.3-inch IPS Display
- Screen Resolution
- WQXGA (2560 x 1600)
- Hard Drives
- 2 TB 4 x 4 NVMe SSD
- PSU
- USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 Power / Charging
- Mouse
- Buttonless Glass Precision Touchpad
- Keyboard
- Backlit, spill resistant keyboard
- Internet Speed
- 1Gb Up / 1Gb Down
- Browser
- Edge
- Antivirus
- Windows Defender
- Other Info
- WiFi 6e / Bluetooth 5.1 / Facial Recognition / Fingerprint Sensor / ToF (Time of Flight) Human Presence Sensor