My laptop regularly receives Microsoft Windows 10 updates. Most of the time it's reboot and done. Sometimes there is a hangup during the reboot so I have to reboot multiple times as the computer works through all the updates.

This time was different. Laptop reboots, the fan starts roaring, display go blank and it stays that way. Multiple reboots don't make a difference.

Boot, boot, boot until I can get laptop to boot up into diagnostics and recovery mode. Fresh Windows install while saving files and settings.

A lot of stuff is gone but a lot of stuff remains on the hard drive. Band-in-a-Box remained but required a fresh activation.

I'm pretty sure I know what I'll be doing for the next few days.

Side note, the Winston-Salem, NC area is supposed to get clobbered with a snow, sleet, freezing rain combination Saturday night and all day Sunday. The Weather Channel cable network has a weatherman named Jim Cantore that is well known for his live shots during extreme weather events like blizzards, floods, tornadoes and so on. Guess who was spotted deplaning at the local airport; yep Jim Cantore. I guess that makes it official it's gonna' be a bad one!

Can you get to safe mode? If you can you can roll back that last update.

That being said, how old is the laptop? When I have problems like you are having I opt to consider it a perfect opportunity to buy a new toy.

I've followed Cantore on the Weather Channel for over 2 decades. He's definitely a character. If he's there it's not looking good for the weather.

Jim, the last Win 10 update froze my machine also, couldn't do a thing. I shut down for about 10 minutes, powered up again, but still had problems. Shut down again. About an hour later powered up and all was OK. I have no idea what happened or how it got corrected. This was the first time in a very long time that I had problems with an update. I hope this isn't a trend to get us to go to Win 11. I am not in a position to purchase 3 new computers.

Guessing per Mario's comment the Windows 10 update may have briefly been bugged across the board. I've got all 3 machines in my house on Win 11 now and none of the updates have caused issues. The OS overall is not much different to Win 10 IMHO.

I've been fighting the "we were unable to complete the updates" malarkey for coming on a year now, with periodic blue-screens and failed repairs to boot. So far all of the failed repairs have actually gotten Windows up and running again, but it's very discouraging indeed.

Often it won't shut down.

I've recently taken to using the "restart" option with no updates, then hitting the power button when the BIOS screen appears.

It won't even reinstall and, at least with the existing copy and other drives present, it won't even install onto a blank disc ... either it says it can't create partitions, or if I use its partition manager and tell it where to install, it says it can't find a free partition.

Before I started the restart trick it was often wasting an hour of my life every time I booted it!

Dare I try an update to Win 11?
While Win 10 is so temperamental?
Not at present.

So your computer has a malar key on it?

If the issue was when you booted, why turn it off? Turn off automatic updates and leave it on. Mine run 24/7. Even more. They run 29/11! I just cut the network connection when I am done using it every day so nothing can get in.

Eddie, I wasn't able to get the laptop to go into safe mode. The laptop's version of Dell diagnostics offers multiple choices to repair Windows but going into safe mode is not one of them. Windows ignored F5 and F8 during reboot.

Jim,
My neighbour had similar Dell issue that you described. If I remember correctly , it was called "boot loop". Honestly, I forgot how we solved it.
Maybe I am wrong, but I vaguely remember Dell recovery USB flash was involved.

Can you get to "restore point" from diagnostics?

P.S. If you have some data that...you do not want to lose, which you feel you might, maybe a good idea to pull drive out and clone it.

Misha, thanks for your idea. I was able to get into diagnostics and receive a fresh Windows install without losing all my files.

Update on the Weather Channels Jim Cantore. He is heading to Asheville, NC. Asheville is surrounded by mountains and is supposed to get hit with a lot of snow. Don't mean to be mean but I'm glad he's heading there instead of here.

According to a post today he is on the coast dealing with the arrival of a hurricane.

https://celebhook.com/meteorologist-where-is-jim-cantore-today-is-he-in-nc-everything-to-know/#weather-channel-where-is-jim-cantore-today-is-he-in-nc-location

Ohio looks better all the time. No real tornado threats, no hurricanes, no wildfire, a small, almost imperceptible earthquake every 40 years or so... This is one of the last places in the country that doesn't have a recurring weather threat. Can't live on a coast. Tornado alley in the Midwest, earthquakes AND fires in California, not to mention general stupidity, scorching temps in the Southwest... Great Lakes area is pretty much free of all of that.

You are getting a hurricane from one direction and a snow storm from the other.

Depending on how much it is worth to you, you can subscribe to a year of Microsoft support. I did that and my blank screen was escalated right up the food chain, until they fixed it. No problems for a long time, but I think I used them twice. To me it was worthwhile.

I have Win10 download the updates but warn me before they get installed. There is a little red dot in the tray.

So before I shut down, I do a complete disk image on external media. That way, if something goes wrong, a rescue can restore the condition to its previous state.

Of course, that means it'll want to update again.

But I have the habit of doing this any time I install an app or do anything major on the computer.

As far as Win11 is concerned, I'll wait until a few bug fixes happen before I consider upgrading.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

"Guess who was spotted deplaning at the local airport; yep Jim Cantore."

Uh-oh! Nice guy but last person you want to see anywhere near where you live. God watch over and protect you. Take care.

Josie

Jim Cantore ended up seeing about 3 inches (7.62 cm) of snow. My area received about the same amount of snow but also a few inches (5 cm) of sleet. Boone, North Carolina is a few miles from here and received about 13 inches (33 cm) of snow.

I was in and out several times today with my daughter's dog. The dog has gone home so I have no plans to go outside tomorrow. I'll wait until later in the week when the temperature is supposed to be a little warmer.

The laptop is functional once again but I continue to find odds and ends that I have to reinstall. Interesting enough I found a text file that lists every program removed during the Windows repair cycle.

I think Jim Cantore may be back. Another blast supposedly going to land this week and into the weekend. Man how I hate winter.

Just over a month left, quit whining.......

I wanna go to Miaaaaaaaami!!!

Mount the trailer and leave man, nothing's stopping you. I'll watch your house.

Weather aside, any time I see a thread concerning Windows updates I have to chime in with comments. These are general, not directed at anybody.

1. The single best thing to do with these issues is to let MS reinstall Windows like Jim did. Forget about trying to diagnose the problem, just back up your stuff and reinstall, that wipes out any "helpful" tweaks you may have done or possibly someone else did you didn't know about. Ever seen recommendations on this forum to use Biab's Return To Factory Settings to solve weird problems? Same thing.

2. I do not mess with my system at all. I know some love to try to uninstall or disable Edge for example, I don't care just leave it alone. If a piece of software is having a problem with Windows and their tech support tells me the easy fix is to simply go into the Registry and do something, that's it for that software as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going there. For over 20 years I've never "tweaked" my system. I leave it exactly how Mother Micrusoft likes it and I've never had any serious update issues.

There is one small thing others have reported. Audio settings. Sometimes an update will shut off my audio, I'll see in the system tray the audio has been muted and I know I didn't do it and occasionally someone will say their power management settings changed although I've never seen that.

The only serious issue I've ever had was not the sort of update we're talking about here it was the "update" from Win 7 to 10. I kept getting hangup's with the system totally freezing up and finally did some searches and found out Avast can cause it and I was using Avast at the time. I tried disabling it and no go, I had to completely uninstall it and then 10 installed. After that I use Windows Security, formerly Defender. It's basically as good as any other AV out there.

3. Many times if a discussion about really bad update failures gets down to technical details the person will give away the fact they're a big time tweaker. They think they're "optimizing" or "helping" their system. They think they know better than MS. They don't.

4. Age of the system. Computers are not an appliance or some piece of lawn care equipment that can last 10-20 years. If somebody's system is that old and they're having these update problems, it's time to update the hardware. Just one example of many I could give is the power supply. They fail all the time but it's usually not an obvious on/off thing. A failing power supply can do random things that interferes with the entire system including booting problems. Same with memory, same with mobo components. I usually replace my system every 5 or 6 years max.

Anyway, what does all this boil down to if you're having this level of major issues because of an update?

Reinstall Windows or buy a new system. To me the test to see if it's a hardware issue is the reinstall. If it won't reinstall or it does reinstall but you're still having problems then it's a hardware issue and it's best to junk it and buy a new one. Unless it's a newer system, in that case it may be worth it to let a pro check it out.

Bob

Here's the problem with my trip. Of the 8 stops I want to make 5 of them come from Boondocker's Welcome. And 4 of those 5 are not accepting guests because of Covid concerns. I need to be stopping at places with 110v power so I have heat overnight. Once I get far enough south I'm okay, but North Carolina, parts of Georgia and such, that weather is so unpredictable it's pretty risky to do anything. Shooting now for late February to see what the hosts are doing.

So I can count on you to fly your drone over my house and watch it while I'm gone?

Bob , part of this whole "I'm too skeered to update" stuff is people's perception of what "problem" means. One update reset my sound to use the onboard sound hardware and I use my Focusrite. Rather than allowing that to make me go out in search of Valium, I hit the Windows key, selected System, then devices, and routed my audio back to the Focusrite. Where some found that a reason to damn the existence of Microsoft, I saw it as an "I know what I need to do" and just did it. It took about 6 seconds of my life, and life went on. As long as computers have been on our lives, I just don't understand why the simplest of troubleshooting still sends people off the deep end.

When I first got my Jeep Renegade, I joined a forum to see what I could learn from people about the nuances of the car. One particular guy, some Charlie Weaver looking hayseed from Indiana somewhere, found a reason to post angry rants EVERY DAY about the STUPIDEST things. Once he went on a 4 day rant because when you set the cruise control, the speedometer doesn't always match your cruise control speed. (Somehow he missed that simple concept of gravity and physics that if you are going even 1 degree uphill your speed is affected.) Another time was that when you turn on the radio, which includes Sirus/XM, it takes 8 seconds to boot and asks you to accept a user's agreement for the U-Connect software in it. If you leave it alone, it defaults after 5 seconds. His complaint was that it added 5 seconds to the time it took the radio to start working. 5 seconds. And he did that about EVERYTHING! Including that his auto sensing wipers didn't work, without grasping that his particular model was NOT EQUIPPED with them!!

When you look for things to irritate you, you will find them. Some people choose to live in a world where it rains every day.

Now we have to deal with the onset of "I like XP! Why is Windows 11 coming out??"

Hey, run XP if you like. Go back to MS-DOS 3.1 if you like. NOBODY CARES! Chances are you won't be able to run it anyway so your computer will not be updated to it, so that's all moot. Of my 5 computers, 3 will not run it, and I don't care. Windows 10, 11, 13, 17 or any other prime number... whatever. All I care about is getting online. (And annoying people.)

Those kind of people still think cars, television, rock'n'roll and the internet are all just passing fads!

My favorite story ever was when I had an in-home repair business one of my clients was a judge. Meaning she went to high school, college, law school, worked as in intern and then passed the bar, worked as a lawyer for years and was then appointed to the bench. That would indicate she was a pretty smart woman. She called me one night at 11:10 to say her kid was playing some pinball game and the computer locked up to where the power button wouldn't even turn it off. I said "You woke me up for THIS? Did it occur to you at all to pull the power cord out of the wall? Judge." THAT is what I hear when people complain that their 10 year old laptop won't run a new OS.

(In Tim The Toolman Taylor's voice)

Spend money.
Buy new computer.
Oogh Oogh.

All the people wanting to be the richest corpse in the graveyard... SMDH