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[Tom-R]

Unfortunately, the partition somehow actually got deleted.   Apparently it happened during (or as a result of) the Windows Update process — although I have no clue how or why.   When I booted from USB with EaseUS Partition Master, it showed the 915 GB space formerly occupied by the C drive partition; however it was now showing up as unallocated free space.  But I was able to use Partition Master to “undelete” the partition.

After “undeleting” the partition, I went and booted from USB with EaseUS Todo Backup, which could also see the partition again.  I was then able to try to do a recovery operation from my last system backup taken yesterday (9/6/2019).  However when I tried to do a normal restore operation I got this error from EaseUS:

Error is found on the file system, please tick sector by sector recovery (or clone) and try again.
0x3160E095 [?]

So I then retried the Recovery operation with EaseUS using the sector-by-sector option.  And that seemed to work OK.  The recovery operation took about 1.5 hours; but eventually it came back and said that the Recovery completed successfully.

And when I restarted the system following this Recovery, the system got further than it did previously.  I got the “Starting Windows” message with the animated Windows logo coming together on the screen.  But immediately after that animated logo, the system crashes with the following BSOD:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down …
PROCESS1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED
Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000006B (0xFFFFFFFFC000012F, 0x0000000000000003, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000)

And note that this BSOD is happening after restoring the partition with the backup that was made before installing the August updates.  So the partition has now (at least theoretically) been restored to the normal working condition that it was in yesterday before this all started.  But something is clearly still messed up.

As far as the BIOS, yes this system has a UEFI BIOS.   And the Boot Order is configured with the first priority boot device being Windows Boot Manager (under UEFI Boot Sources).   So I believe that’s all normal.

If you’ve got any advice on how or where to go from here, please let me know.  I’m open to any suggestions.

*** One additional update ***

When I restart the system now, instead of trying to boot directly into Windows, I get the Windows Error Recovery screen, with options to either “Start Windows Normally” or “Launch Startup Repair (recommended)”.  If I select “Launch Startup Repair” Windows Boot Manager immediately aborts with the same error as noted previously:

Windows failed to start.  A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.
Status:  0xc0000225
Info:  The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

So I can’t even attempt a Startup Repair.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Tom-R.

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jburk07

Thanks for the suggestion, “anonymous#2”.   I actually decided on doing that myself a couple hours ago.   In order to create a bootable flash drive though I had to spring for buying a license to Partition Master.   (The free/trial version won’t allow you to create a WinPE boot device or ISO file.)   In any event, I bought it, created the bootable flash drive, and I’m currently using it on that hosed system right now.

As soon as Partition Master came up it saw all the partitions (there are several of them).  It also saw the “unallocated” 915 GB that was formerly my C drive.  I had an option to just directly select it and try to “undelete” it.  But I’m taking what I hope is the safer route.  I’m letting Partition Master run a “quick scan” to look for lost partitions.  However, that “quick scan” is taking well over an hour to run on this 3 TB drive.  It’s around 80% complete now; so I’m going to allow it to run all the way to completion.   I’ll update my post later tonight after I see what happens with the Partition Recovery operation.

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jburk07

**Win 7 System Partition WIPED OUT following August Updates**

Let me apologize upfront here if the info I’m providing isn’t complete.   Unfortunately I haven’t yet been able to get the computer in question here back to a working state yet.   But here’s the info that I can provide.

I have a Win 7 Home Premium HP Desktop that’s been going along fine for years.  I’ve kept it up-to-date with all the Monthly Rollups once Susan and Woody give the OK.   Today (per the move to Defcon 3) I made a system backup of the boot drive, and created a System Restore point.  All OK.  No issues.

Went to Windows Update and did a check.  Found three updates listed: KB4512506, KB4474419, and the MSRT (KB890830).  All three downloaded and installed successfully, after which Windows Update prompted for a Restart.  I clicked the Restart button, and the screen showed Window Update was working on updates.  At 30% progress I walked away to let the system finish on its own.

Several minutes later when I returned, the following text based error from Windows Boot Manager was on the screen:

Windows failed to start.  A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.
Status:  0xc0000225
Info:  The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

I powered down and tried rebooting; but got the same error.  Running a disk diag confirmed that the disk drive hardware was fine.  So I booted from my EaseUS Boot flash drive to try to do a Restore from the System Backup that I had just done earlier.  But when I selected my system drive as the destination for the recovery I got the following error:

There is no enough space on the target to do sector by sector
recovery.  Do you want to recover without sector by sector option?

And when I answered Yes to the sector-by-sector option, I got this error:

Not enough unallocated space on the target disk.  To make sure
the boot ability of target disk, please delete partitions on there first.

That’s when I took a closer look at the destination disk seen by the EaseUS backup program.  And it’s at that point where I noticed that the destination drive was showing a 915 GB chunk of Unallocated free space where my system C drive partition used to reside.   The system partition was gone!

Since the only change made to the system in the past couple hours was installing these Windows Updates, I pretty much have to assume that either KB4512506 or KB4474419 (or the combination of the two) is responsible for this.

I guess I’ll be spending the rest of today trying to get the system back to where it was this morning.  But I just wanted to give a heads up to everyone here that maybe (just maybe) these updates still aren’t quite ready or safe to install.  If you do decide to go ahead, be absolutely certain you have a good current backup (always good advice).  I’ll update my posting here if I discover any new details about what or how this happened.

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SueW, jburk07, Chessie, Moonbear

[Tom-R]

I understand that KB4474419 was re-released just last month (on 8/13/2019).  So I’m wondering why Susan makes no mention of it in the Master Patch List.   Shouldn’t that patch be included in the MPL for August with the appropriate status (“Install” in this case)?  That would eliminate any confusion about whether or not it’s OK.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Tom-R.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Tom-R.

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deanwmn

Click “Continue with Adblocker” and all will be revealed.

Or, better yet, use Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus.  With that combination you can click on Susan’s link to the TechRadar article; and you’ll never even see that pop-up window … or any of the ads.

Incidentally, for comparison, I opened the same link to that article using Firefox with those two extensions, and then later using Chrome with no extensions.   Firefox displays the full article (minus all the ads and other extraneous stuff of course) in just a few seconds.

Chrome (loading up the full web page with all the ads and other unrelated clutter) takes almost a minute to fully display everything.   And while I’m waiting for the page to finish loading, Chrome will periodically throw up its own pop-up message that the web page is unresponsive — and asking if I want to wait or not.

Choosing between Chrome and Firefox for me is pretty much a no-brainer.  Life’s too short to be sitting around waiting for web pages to load in Chrome.

[Tom-R]

Thanks for the link.  I actually did come across that forum thread as well.  The interesting part for me was this portion:

Appears to be a problem with the App store and need to clear everything out of the Apps folder:  In our case I removed the 2.0 folder from the APPS folder and the application would install and auto-update once again with no problems.

XP: Remove the 2.0 folder from %userprofile%\Local Settings\Apps
Vista: Remove the 2.0 folder from %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Apps

So in troubleshooting my own issue I did check the %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Apps folder.  In my case though, I didn’t even have a 2.0 folder in the Apps folder.  So there was nothing for me to remove.

But just for good measure I went ahead and removed the entire Apps folder (where the 2.0 folder was reported to have been in that thread).  However, that had no effect on my problem.  Even with the entire Apps folder gone, I still continue to get the same error when installing Vista SP2.  I also get the same errors in the CBS.log when running an SFC scan.  So, at least in my case, the advice in that thread was no help.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Tom-R.

Woody, I really don’t think that restricting access to the Master Patch List is a good idea.  The only way that would make sense would be if the entire site here was restricted to Plus Membership users (not that I’m suggesting that).  As long as the site — and these discussion forums — are open to one and all, then limiting who can access the MPL is just going to cause confusion and needless question-and-answer threads.  For example,

Hey, does anybody know if KBxxxxxxx is safe to install yet?  How many updates were released last month for Win 8/8.1?  What’s the latest security-only update for Win 7 this month?  Does anyone know why some folks here are saying to hold off on installing KBxxxxxxx for Office 2016?  How many security-only patches were released for Office 2013 last month, and are they all considered OK to install now?  etc.  etc.

You get the idea.  These forums are going to be flooded with questions like my examples above.  And all for no reason.  They are all questions that are answered by looking thru Susan’s Master Patch List.  Clogging up the forums with needless Q&A threads like that just doesn’t seem practical or productive.  I wish you would really reconsider that plan.

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Hopper15, CADesertRat, CBA, Spiral, Mele20, Wibbly, Alex5723, b

I’m going to add this report here even though I can’t be certain if the behavior and symptoms I saw are verifiable or repeatable.  However, I think it’s possible that KB4512488 may have bigger issues than just breaking RDP login on Server 2012 R2.

I have a client with a Toshiba Satellite laptop (Model S55t-B5273NR), i7-4710HQ CPU, 8GB RAM, running Win 8.1 Home 64-bit and Office 2013.  The user had previously set Windows Update to just go ahead and “Install updates automatically”.  Consequently, yesterday, the system automatically downloaded KB4512488 .  And when she shut the system down for the day it installed the update.

Later in the day she powered on and booted the system back up for some additional work.  The system took about three times as long to boot up to get to the Desktop.  But once it got there she noticed that everything was responding agonizingly slow.  And as she tried to use it (e.g., Outlook mainly) it continued to get slower and slower.  Eventually it stopped responding altogether, where she couldn’t even get a response to clicking the Desktop or Taskbar icons.  She had to press and hold the power button to get the system turned off.

She then called me.  We powered the system back on.  And eventually, after about 3 to 4 times longer boot time than usual, we were able to get the Windows Desktop.  But once again, things quickly started slowing down.  I was able to bring up Task Manager.  CPU usage was normal (around 15 to 20%), and memory usage was minimal.  But the disk activity was pegged solidly at 100%.  I tried to drill down with Resource Monitor to figure out what processes were behind the high disk activity.  But before I could get any useful info, the system bogged down so severely that I couldn’t even get Resource Monitor or Task Manager to respond any more.  Performance deteriorated quickly in just a matter of minutes after getting the Desktop.

Eventually, after restarting the system multiple times, I was able to get access to System Restore.  I selected the most recent restore point prior to this latest update (which happened to be from 8/12/2019).  The restore process took quite a while; but it eventually finished.  Only problem was that at the end it said that “System Restore did not complete successfully. An unspecified error occurred during System Restore. (0x800700b7)”

The only option at that point was to close the error window, and restart the system — which is what I did.  However, the system restarted much faster this time, and once it got to the Windows Desktop, there was another status window displayed from System Restore; but this time it said “System Restore completed successfully.  The system has been restored to 8/12/2019 9:00:50 AM. ”

And sure enough, when I went into Windows Update -> Update History -> Installed Updates, there was no longer any trace there of KB4512488.  So the System Restore worked!  Even more importantly though, once that update got removed the system returned to its normal perky high-performance self.  Disk activity was back to averaging around 5% or so — at least when the system was idle.

Since this is a client’s computer — and not a test system — I can’t really go back and try to recreate the problem to see if it’s repeatable or not.  But I just wanted to document the experience here in case anyone else runs into a similar issue with this update.

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Kirsty

One thing that I’d be interested in knowing (and probably others here as well) is whether or not your system is Win 10 Home or Pro.   And another question of interest would be knowing if your Internet connection is set to “Metered”, and if that connection is Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

Sparky, I can’t speak for Woody; but if you’re asking about your Win7 system I can tell you what I do.  I keep the Windows Update setting always set to “Never check for updates (not recommended)“.  And whenever Woody gives the all-clear (generally DEFCON 4) I go ahead and do a manual “Check for Updates” at that time.  However, I don’t ever change the setting to “Install updates automatically”.  The way I see it that setting is just asking for trouble.  I want to stay in control of when my system gets its updates — at least as much as I can (despite Microsoft’s attempts at taking it over).  Based on what you said it sounds like you’re doing the same thing that I am.  So I think you should be fine.

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Lars220, Sparky

… the Windows Update and Windows Update Medic Service both are listed as “Disabled”, although Windows Update Medic Service is listed as “Running” strangely, even though it’s “Disabled”.

It is possible that a service can have a Status listed as ‘Running’, even though the Startup Type is set to ‘Disabled’.  This could happen if the service is already in a ‘Running’ state at the point where a user or a program (e.g., wub.exe) comes along and sets it to ‘Disabled’.

My advice would be to manually stop the Windows Update Medic service.  Then wait and see if it ever starts up again.  I’m thinking that as long as the Startup Type is set to ‘Disabled’ then you should never find the service in a ‘Running’ state again.

PK, I checked the link you provided, and it basically says this:

Its normally a system service account used with Microsoft’s Internet Information Service web server software for developing and publishing web pages.  Also, it is sometimes related to the .NET framework.  If you work with asp.net development work then keep that account. Otherwise, you may delete/remove this account.

Well I know I’m not doing any ASP.NET development work, and I’m not developing or publishing web pages.  And I don’t have MS Internet Information Services enabled on this system.  So based on that I would probably assume it’s OK to delete the account.

However, this system does have Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installed.  And it also has a couple .NET Framework 4.7 Advanced Services enabled (i.e., ASP.NET 4.7 and TCP Port Sharing under WCF Services).

So what I’m concerned about is this: Will deleting the ASP.NET Machine Account cause problems for .NET Framework 1.1 or the .NET Framework 4.7 Advanced Services?  Just doing a Google search on “Windows ASP.NET account” doesn’t provide much insight into whether or not that account is needed or used by those .NET Framework services.  Is there any link with more specific info on what that account is actually used for?

Why do you not like BitLocker with Windows 10? … While it may not have been true in the past, BitLocker now works on all Windows 10 editions, including Home.

Why?   At least 4 reasons (and maybe more).

1. A Microsoft account is required — which I don’t (and won’t) use.
2. The recovery key is uploaded to a OneDrive account — which I also don’t want.
3. There’s no support for encrypted containers or hidden volumes.
4. On Win 10 Home, no support for encrypting secondary or removable drives.

Having said that though, I don’t see what advantage there is to using CipherShed as opposed to VeraCrypt.   Everything that CipherShed (or BitLocker) can do is already available in VeraCrypt.

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oldfry, rc primak, Bluetrix

Thanks for the info.   That explains why Windows Update never offered up KB4462178.   It also explains why when I tried to download and install the patch manually (from MS-KB4462178), I got the message: “There are no products affected by this package installed on this system.”   Mystery solved.   Thanks again.

I’m not sure which would be the appropriate forum to post this question; so let me apologize up front if this isn’t the right place.   But let me ask it here for now.

I have a Win 8.1 Pro system with MS Office 2010 Pro.  Based on the Defcon-4 setting I did a Check for Updates earlier today.  The Windows updates appeared as expected, and I installed them without any issues.  But for the Office 2010 updates, there was only 1 security update listed — KB4461619 (for Word 2010).  It also installed OK.

But here’s my question.  Susan’s Master Patch List shows 2 security patches for Office 2010 released in June — KB4461619 (for Word 2010) and KB4462178 (for Office 2010).  Why would Windows Update offer me KB4461619, but not KB4462178?

Note: After restarting, I checked my Installed Updates, and I confirmed that KB4462178 is definitely not installed on this system.  So it’s still missing.  Does anyone know why this system is only getting 1 of these 2 security patches?