UKH

... if you have more than one hard drive, then be aware that this update can change which one your BIOS looks to boot from.

I have just spent quite a long time swearing at my machine before I worked out what the problem was!  Posting this just in case I can save someone else the same experience.

Also - it's a big one. Been going for 20 mins now and still claims to be at 93%...

I have several pending updates on a PC with 2 drives - can you identify the one that causes the problem please?

Thanks for the heads-up.  

I've just been paying for some plugin software and I won't be happy if my machine Bork's as a result of this.  

What's wrong with these programmers ? Why write updates that do shit like this?

Keith - it's version 2004 of Windows 10.  Looks like the update that caused this was KB2267602.  I still have KB 4561600 and KB4565627 pending.

TWS - as far as I can see this was just a dumb mistake.  My machine has six SATA sockets to plug hard drives into, and when I built it I put a small drive into SATA1 to hold Windows, and a big drive into SATA2 for data.  Then I upgraded it with a SSD (which has made things a lot quicker).  But when I got this I plugged it into the easiest socket to get at, which was SATA6.  As part of shifting the OS across you tell the PC that this is the new drive to look for the copy of Windows on.

The update has simply overwritten that instruction, so it went back to looking at the drive in SATA1, and there's no copy of Windows there any more!  If I'm right, this is only going to mess people's machines up if they have bought a new drive to put their OS onto and not taken the time to shift the connections so it's plugged it into SATA1.

It's an easy fix.  You'll know if this has happened because as soon as you start to boot he machine up you get an error telling you to insert a bootable disk.  Usually what causes this is some sort of hardware failure, which took me down several false trails.  But in this case you simply need to enter BIOS and look at the boot instructions. Somewhere in there will be a) a list of which places to look for booting - that should be pointing at the HDD rather than a CDROM or floppy drive.  and b) there'll be a list of your HDDs - this is what got mixed up, and you need to tell it to look at your actual OS drive.

They have my sympathy.   It is so difficult to think of everything.

Maybe but changing Bios setting so your drives don't work as required is just like changing your engine out and not telling you.

Basic basic stuff .  

Bet they are paid enough 

Maybe, maybe not.

My products have had returns over the years with faults never foreseen.

It is certainly not economic to test forever.  You have to decide when to let it go and move on.

This isn't exactly unforeseen though, it's how PCs work.  How come Windows is doing things to the BIOS in the first place though?

It would be odd for Windows update to alter BIOS settings. More likely you never changed the bios boot order and the update changed the MBR on SATA1 so that it appeared bootable, and then failed.

The key here is that we are not actually talking about a BIOS but a UEFI firmware. The UEFI boot loader configuration is generally set up by the OS, whether that is Windows or Linux or whatever, since UEFI launches the operating system image directly. It is entirely normal for the OS to alter its own bootloader configuration in this context. For instance, my Linux servers update which kernel image UEFI should launch and with what parameters when updating the kernel.

I mean, we're now beyond my knowledge of how the thing works!  It was a few years since I fitted the SSD, but as I remember I used a clever program to copy the old C drive to the new one, and then had to tell the BIOS to treat that one as the boot drive.  Then I wiped the old one.

That's worked perfectly for a few years, and then the reboot from this update failed - and when I went into BIOS it was looking at the wrong drive.

You're not alone.  A big electronic advertising board I saw on the morning commute had a windows update error message

Yes, but to change the boot device to one other than to which updates have just been installed seems to be a spectacular failure...

No question about that, just pointing out that since UEFI became a thingy the OS screwing around with the boot configuration is the norm.

Good Grief!!!

15 posts in and I've barely understood a word. And I'm not completely computer-illiterate.

As has been mentioned on here before, if cars were sold needing the amount of updates that Windows seems to require just to keep working then there'd be an outcry.

I worry every time I see a Windows update notice that this one will crash my aged machine. It always seems to work slower after the update, and as it's a laptop it's really annoying that I can't switch it off to take it out with me because the update's running. Then when I get to a meeting I can't use it until the update has "configured".

Can someone with the required expertise (seems like everyone who's replied so far) please enlighten me? Why can't Microsoft engineers properly test each edition of their software before release, then store up all their ongoing improvements and release them all in the next "presumably Windows 11" properly tested version?

Martin

It's a very difficult problem: there is no such thing as a standard PC; and the levels of backwards support involved in all this are mind-blowing.

The analogy with cars fails: Microsoft don't make the hardware. (Apple in that respect has a huge advantage: they control both the hardware, and the software.)

Because the complexity of modern operating systems, especially considering the *vast* variety of hardware they run on, is orders of magnitude higher than a car.

Plus, even minor bugs in an operating system exposed to the internet very quickly become exploitable security flaws. Microsoft learnt that the hard way with Windows XP and their reputation got tarnished because of it.

To use your car analogy: cars don't need updates because there aren't hundreds/thousands of people trying to work out new ways of crashing in to your car every day. There are hundreds/thousands of people trying to work out how to steal your data/hack in to your computer etc

There aren't also hundreds of different manufacturers constantly making new steering wheels, speedometers, gearboxes for your car. There are hundreds of manufacturers making parts for your computer and developing new software that the operating system has to work with.

Now combine the 2 issues, and imagine that there was only 1 type of car in the world. With that car you had to do all the different jobs road vehicles do: people carriers, sporty hatchback, hairdresser cars, small vans, medium vans, large vans etc etc. To make the 1 vehicle appropriate for each job you have to buy different versions of it. But all the add ons are made by different people who don't always talk to each other about how their parts work. This is where the OS has to be the middleman. Then add on the fact that there are hundreds/thousands of people trying to work out new ways to crash in to you when your driving your new car