• ASW

    ASW

    @asw

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    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587644

      Thanks for the clarification.

      I tried the old (known working) i5 processor and got the exact same result of no boot/no beeps/black screen. Basically no indication that anything is happening under the hood except for the fans spinning.

      Guess I’ll take a look for graphics cards. There is an e-recycler in my small town. Maybe he will let me look through some junk computers to see if I can find cheap parts for testing purposes.

      What’s the chance that a working, unmolested DVI-D cable would fail? I only have the one cable (my laptop uses a different cable) so again, no spare to test against.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587622

      I thought onboard video was associated with the CPU, but you’re saying it’s a separate part of the motherboard, correct? You learn something new every day.

      I suspect my only way of acquiring a separate video card will be to buy one, so I guess I’ll see what prices look like for that. I’m sort of getting away from my plan of updating a cheap older computer here.

      However, if the onboard video is bad, and if you need to be able to see screen output to get in to the BIOS to swap from onboard to a separate graphics card, how would you do that?

      I still keep thinking that if the computer was actually booting up but with no video output so I can’t see what’s happening there should be some audio indication (= beeps). I actually can’t recall if this computer beeps when it’s booting, but I know other computers I’ve used did.

      Thanks.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587588

      Is there anyway to actually assess if the motherboard is bad outside of replacing it with a different one?

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587587

      Am I correct that onboard video is an attribute of the CPU? The reason I ask is that I still have the original CPU from this computer that I can swap back in. I replaced a second generation i5 with a third generation i7 at some point in the past. It worked fine with W8.1 before the W10 upgrade, when I started having problems.

      But, assuming I can find it in my “stuff” box it’s not hard to put it back in and see.

      As far as video cards go, I’m not sure I know anyone (nearby) who even uses a desktop computer. My younger brother has a bunch of old desktops, but he’s unfortunately 1/2 a U.S.A. away from my location.

      Thanks.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587409

      No video card. The computer uses the onboard Intel video.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587400

      I can’t do anything really. Pressing the power button on the computer causes the fans to spin up but apparently doesn’t proceed far enough in the boot process to send any signal to the monitor or produce beeps or other noises.

      I’ve tried using the function key presses that you would normally use to force access to the BIOS, boot order selection, etc., but if anything is happening I can’t see it.

      I’ve tested that the monitor is good (works attached to my laptop) but don’t have a good way to check if there’s some issue with the DVI-D outputs on the computer. It seems unlikely that issue would appear immediately after my cumulative update problem.

      I have access to my wife’s monitor, so I’ll try that, but I’m not sure if it really gives me any information if it also doesn’t show any signal.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587397

      Thanks for the ideas.

      I have two 8 GB DIMMs in two slots. I tried each one singly in each slot with no boot. Just for kicks, I dug out an old 4 GB DIMM used in this computer before I beefed up the RAM and tried it in each slot. No boot. I will note that the 8 GB RAM sticks recently passed a memory test (before the booting issue) when I was trying to figure out why the W10 cumulative updates kept killing the computer.

      To my eyes, all parts of the motherboard — capacitors, connector slots, etc. — look completely normal.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2587386

      Not sure anyone sees these older threads and will respond, but I’m at a loss here. After the Aug cumulative update killed my W10 22H2 (as outlined a few posts above), just like the July cumulative update had, I didn’t have time to deal with the computer for a while. As advised above, my plan was to restore to a backup and then do a complete W10 reinstall and start over with my wonderful W10 experience.

      Except… when I finally had time to work on the computer about a week ago I had no boot. Nothing. No beeps. Just spinning fans and a black screen on the monitor. More specifically, the fans would spin up for about 5 seconds, then stop, then spin back up and keep spinning for at least 5 minutes, at which time I got tired of watching and pulled the power.

      I did a bunch of reading and the following tests.

      1 – I tested the monitor. When unplugged from the desktop there was a “no input” message and when plugged into my laptop it worked fine. I tried both DVI-D outputs on the desktop with no change. I’ll note that the monitor almost immediately goes to sleep (based on the color of the power button) after attempting to boot the computer, suggesting that there’s no signal at all being output.

      2 – I reset the CMOS (several times, several methods) and tried to boot. No change.

      3 – I pulled the SSD (boot/OS) and HDD (my files) and tested them using my laptop. I did chkdsk, sfc, and dism tests along with various tests implemented through Hard Disk Sentinel. No problems with the drives. I’ll note that when I tried to boot without drives in the desktop the screen was again black (i.e., no error message about missing boot drive) so again no response at all.

      4 – I pulled and reseated all components and cables (RAM, SATA, power) inside the desktop computer. I didn’t think this could be a problem as the desktop wasn’t touched or moved in between being able to boot and not, but worth a check. No change.

      5 – I tested the power supply using a multi-meter. All pins read as they should: 3.35V, 5.17V, or 12.19V. The only thing different from my 24-pin connection and the example in the tutorial I read was that mine doesn’t have a pin 14 (-12V) or pin 20 (-5V; I’m not sure what the negative means but that’s what the diagram in the tutorial showed). These slots are just empty, and there’s no wire coming from the back. I don’t know if that matters, but the wires didn’t evaporate so it’s always been like that and hasn’t caused a problem previously. Apparently the power supply is fine.

      The only other thing I’ve read about is the motherboard failing, but I haven’t found instructions for testing that. It doesn’t seem terribly likely to me that motherboard would be fine for years and fail immediately after a W10 cumulative update problem.

      Does anyone have ideas or suggestions for other tests to run. As best as I can tell, all the components in the computer are fine, they just don’t come together to make a booting computer. As I’ve noted above and in previous posts, this desktop was a functioning W7 and then W8.1 computer for years before I (foolishly?) tried to install W10. Which is frustrating.

      Thanks.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2583540

      CPU upgrade was made in the past, but I will check (after rolling back to my backup before trying the cumulative update) that the license is accepted and there’s nothing wrong on that front.

      I’ve never bought a W10 license. I used the previous W8.1 license I bought years ago for this computer. Not sure if that makes any difference but your comment made me think of it.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully #2583528

      A month ago I made a post about the July cumulative update causing errors on an HP desktop that I recently did a clean install of W10 22H2 (came with W7, running W8.1 for several years). Here’s some of the relevant information from July.

      1. I used wumgr to download and install only the MSRT and KB5028166 (monthly cumulative update). I was not offered any .NET updates. The computer rebooted and the status slowly updated to 97% complete, after which I got a blue screen of sadness, Stop Code WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR and Error Code 0xc0000225.
      2. Apparently the update process killed my Boot Configuration Data. My W10 install USB would not work for repair (no boot). Regardless of what I tried I kept seeing ERROR: No boot disk has been detected or the disk has failed.
      3. I was eventually able to use an EaseUS Todo Backup repair USB (or whatever they call it) to boot into a repair environment and roll back my computer to a backup made before attempting the W10 update. As wise people say, always make backups.

      I will note that I tried the July update several times and got the same result each time. I went through a whole slew of recommended scans, dism, etc., none of which showed any errors. In short, I couldn’t identify any issue with the computer except the fact that the July cumulative update killed it.

      In response to my previous question someone asked how old the computer is. I don’t know exactly as it was originally purchased by my little sister, but it’s somewhere in the 8-9 years old range. For some of you, that might be ancient and should be tossed aside, but I think it still has useful life for home use (typing, spreadsheets, Powerpoint, Internet).

      During the time my sister used the computer I updated the RAM to 16 GB, installed an SSD for the operating system, and upgraded the CPU from i5-2320 to i7-3770. Prior to installing W10 maybe six weeks ago the computer had been running W7 and then W8.1, quickly and efficiently, for years without issues. The SSD and HDD report no errors according to Hard Drive Sentinel. The RAM passes Memtest.

      Someone recommended waiting to try the August cumulative update. I’ve done that now and it produces the same errors as above. So, for my computer at least, attempting to install either of the cumulative updates (July/Aug) available since I downloaded a W10 ISO file and installed W10 kills the computer.

      I guess the option now is to try a fresh install again. I don’t have time today so if anyone has a different idea that could save me a wasted weekend morning, feel free to chime in.

      I avoided W10 for as long as I could which in retrospect seems like a good decision. I don’t mind farting around a bit with computers (e.g., I have a white Macbook 2,1 from 2006 running W8.1, just because I thought it would be fun to try, and I have experimented with various Linux distros over the years), but in general I consider computers to be tools and not toys. I don’t want to play, I just want to do my work and be done. I certainly don’t want to spend hours and hours to coax my computer into booting after trying to install an update.

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    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 4: Got 22H2? #2576432

      Thanks.

      I had run scannow several times previously, but did it again – no issues identified.

      I had not previously tried the DISM command but that also showed no issues.

      A real head scratcher. I think for now I’ll just do nothing and keep testing my older software to see if it installs and works on W10. If not, that will also play a role in whether I stay or go back to W8.1.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 4: Got 22H2? #2576014

      I guess it’s possible the install was bad, but I was testing the computer for 2-3 weeks at basic tasks to see if I wanted to keep W10 or revert to W8.1, which was stable (and configured to my liking) over a period of years .

      I find it hard to believe that it would work fine for a couple of weeks, with dozens of reboots, and then just happen to crash hard on the reboot after the cumulative update…

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 4: Got 22H2? #2575993

      I’m running a fresh/clean install of W10 22H2 on an older HP desktop computer. Fresh install as in I finally gave in and replaced W8.1 with W10 a few weeks ago. I’m still running W7 on my laptop because I’m not a W10 fan. My first W10 monthly update experience hasn’t changed my mind.

      I used wumgr to download and install only the MSRT and KB5028166 (monthly cumulative update). I was not offered any .NET updates. The computer rebooted and the status slowly updated to 97% complete, after which I got a blue screen of sadness, Stop Code WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR, and Error Code 0xc0000225.

      I did some reading about that to learn that the update process apparently killed my Boot Configuration Data. Cool. Based on what I read I tried to use my recently created W10 install USB for repair, but that won’t boot either. I tried using the boot order menu to force the boot from the USB (and later from my OS drive as well). Regardless of what I attempt I get:

      ERROR: No boot disk has been detected or the disk has failed.

      Any advice?

      I haven’t been using W10 long enough to even reinstall much of my software, so if I have to start over it’s not the end of the world, but it would be annoying. Alternatively, I might just go back to W8.1 (I cloned my SSD to an old HDD) which ran flawlessly for years (as has W7 for over a decade) and live with higher security risk.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 4: Skip those Secure Boot scripts #2561457

      Thanks PKCano.

      You were correct. The download through wumgr was quick and small – not even 1 GB, let alone 100+. No idea why wumgr reports the size as 106 GB.

    • in reply to: MS-DEFCON 4: Skip those Secure Boot scripts #2561420

      Possible stupid question here.

      I recently updated my wife’s laptop from Win8.1 to Win10 21H2. Now I want to do the feature update to 22H2. I use InControl and wumgr to control updates. So, I turned InControl off and in wumgr under “Upgrades” I see the feature update. Then I notice that it’s 106.59 GB in size.

      Hmm. This laptop has a 128 GB SSD with the current Win10 install + software eating up about 32 GB. A 250-ish GB mSata SSD holds her stuff (currently about 70 GB used).

      Is there an easy way to direct the 22H2 download to the larger SSD or an external HDD?

      Thanks.

    Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)