SOLVED Win7 updates and hdd's

[JadeCat95]

I've run into this problem 3 times now, and my brother says he's had the same issue. I'm hoping someone can explain what's going on, and how to stop it, or at least fix it.

Setup: Compaq Laptop, 250gb hdd pre installed with Win7 Home Prem, 3gb RAM

Laptop has run flawlessly since I got it about 2 years ago or so.....until recently. What I can tell happened; Updated Win7 with auto update. Update required reboot, so I said yes. Laptop now won't boot up and sends me to Boot up repair. Repair doesn't work, still can't boot. Try this several times to no avail. I get frustrated and say to heck with it, and decide I'll just reinstall Win7 with the disc that came with the laptop. Turn on unit, boot from CD/DVD and setup starts......until it gets to where to install it to. The drive it was installed on from factory is GONE!! Well, it's physically in the unit, but setup isn't recognizing it. The system partition is there, and the recovery partition is there, but not the Windows partition. I say "WTF?!?!?!". Then I say, ok, I'll format the HDD and start fresh. Setup has other ideas, and tells me I can't format it.

So I leave it alone for a day or two, to keep myself from throwing it against the wall. Then, for some unknown reason, I think, "hook the HDD up to another computer and see if sees the missing partition. I hook it up to the family pc, via USB/SATA external drive. Look in the drives list and it's the same as what Win7 setup showed me. The system partition and recovery partition are there, but not the Windows drive. "Damn!" I thought. The HDD is shot. But then, another inkling hit me and I decide to try the USB/SATA thing on a laptop running XP. BAM!! There's the Windows drive!!! All the folders are there and all the files are there. I can even open all of them. Ok, so I think, "must have unfrozen something or something", so I put it back in the laptop. No boot, and setup is, once again, not recognizing the Windows drive. CRAP!!

So, I blow the dust off an old desktop unit that also had Win7 pre-installed, that I was having video card issues with. Got the issues resolved and re-installed Win7. Again, with the disc that came with it. Everything runs fine for a while, until an auto update. I run the update, and when finished, I am watching a video and then all of the sudden, it shuts down and I get a blue screen telling me about a memory dump. I'd gotten that before on that unit, so it didn't concern me all that much. However, when trying to reboot, it does the exact same thing that my laptop did. No boot. NO!!!!!!!!!!

I try all the same things to no avail, and again, the XP laptop can see all the drives, but none of the Win7 units can.

So, getting desperate, I leave the HDD from the desktop hooked up to the XP laptop and run a partition (EaseUS Partition Maker) program. The program sees all the drives, so I format one to put a fresh install of Win7 on. Take it back to the desktop, install Win7 and it seems fine. I start loading all my drivers back in and everything still seems to be going fine. I need to run an errand, and the desktop needs to run the auto Windows update and there are 135 updates to process, so I figure it's a good time to run the errands. I come back to a screen saying I need to reboot, so I do. Guess what?? Yep. Won't boot. Same damn thing.....AGAIN!!!

So I redo the partition program thing again, and load Win7 back up....again, and start loading drivers and programs. Auto update says it's ready to install those 135 updates again, but I'm not falling it's trickery this time, and, so far, I've rebooted several times, from driver installs, and NOT ONE bootup issue. So I'm REALLY weary about updating this time.

My brother said his laptop did the exact same thing after an auto-update from Windows.

I'm in the process, as I write this, of formatting the laptop HDD with the partition program. Keep in mind, this partition program has been the ONLY thing that is letting me format any of these drives.

So. Any ideas????? Why is this doing this, seemingly, only after a Windows Update?

 

[TrainableMan]

I didn't read all your post but it sounds like the jist of it is you think Windows Update stops your computer from working.

Normal Windows updates really shouldn't cause such a problem HOWEVER most people have Windows Updates set to "treat recommended updates the same as critical updates". Recommended updates sometimes include (Non-Microsoft) manufacturer's drivers and the wrong drivers CAN cause video problems, boot problems, etc.

When incorrect drivers are installed you can normally you just boot into safe mode and back-out the update(s) but it sounds like you can't get in at all and so you reinstall.

My suggestion would be a good virus scan and active A/V software because it could also be a virus, etc in your data or coming from your email etc. But assuming you are correct and it is a Windows Update then you should also disable "treat recommended updates the same as critical updates"

and I think it will stop the problem.

After that you will have to manually run Windows Updates to install any "Recommended" but if you do that carefully, you can avoid or "permanently hide" the update which is messing up your computer.

 

[JadeCat95]

Thank you for the quick response! And thank you for the suggestion. I think I had the Updates set up that way before, because when I set it to your suggestion, it looks the same way as it did before, giving me notification for "Important" updates separate from "Optional" updates, and that's how it was when all this happened. However, I would just always just tell it to install ALL updates. If I'm reading your suggestion correctly, I need to weed out the non-MS options and decide if I want to get them.

A question now is, if there are updates in the "Optional" category that DO say they are from MS, those should be ok to get?

 

[TrainableMan]

Well if you manually run Windows Updates it always shows separate categories for Critical & Recommended. The issue is when you allow for Automatic Updates: if you have that box checked then it automatically downloads and installs both, if not checked then Automatic Updates only downloads and installs Critical.

To be clear, you are downloading ALL of these updates from Microsoft servers, however that could include drivers that were shipped to them from other manufacturers, but to answer your question, yes anything published by Microsoft should be OK (things like .NET updates, anything that has a KB#####). Even so there are still things from Microsoft I do not want installed, a huge example is the BING Desktop and for quite some time I did not install IE9 or Silverlight; I think it is important to make a conscious decision to install updates not allow even Microsoft to force-feed their "unnecessary extras" onto your computer; so yes Microsoft "others" should be safe but do you want them? You must decide.

As for drivers, they usually include the word "driver" in their description and even that you may very well want the driver update, but if it is one that is incorrect for your machine it could cause you issues, best to go to the Compaq website (as well as the website of your video card if a separate board, sound card if separate, and printer) and download/install all your drivers updates from there then rerun the Windows Update scan and see if the suggestion went away; if not then you may have to research it to decide.

 

[JadeCat95]

Thank you, and I will definitely take all this into consideration. I do usually, not always, but usually, get my drivers from the manufacturers source, not from MS.

On a side note, I absolutely agree with you on some of the stuff MS wants you get. I, too, will never get the Bing Desktop, and I only use IE for testing purposes when creating webpages.

I will mark this issue as solved, for now. Unless it ends up happening again. :/