davidgillon | Entries tagged with windows

Un-be-lievable.

I got home on Tuesday after a completely troublefree journey, spent a couple of days pottering about/reading, and on Friday settled down to do some actual work on my laptop (as my desktop machine is still in pieces after last month's Windows update disaster trashed the C drive).

But it was obvious the laptop needed rebooting - I can leave the desktop on for weeks, the laptop seems to need a reboot a couple of times a week or it grinds to a halt. And when I went to reboot the laptop, it also wanted to do a Windows Update. Which obviously filled me with terror, but what can you do?

So I started the reboot, and off it went, and it restarted and the percentage complete icon for the update whirred around to 100% complete, and sat there, for an hour. So by this time stress levels are rising.

And then it announced that it was doing a BIOS update. Dear god, are you trying to stress me to death here?

And it whirred away for another ten minutes, and rebooted again.

And this time it worked, huzzah!

So I log in.

And Windows tells me "We can't seem to connect to your profile. You may be able to fix this by logging out and logging in again. Any changes you make while in this temporary profile will be lost when you logout."

Oh, FFS!!!

So I log out and in again, and nothing changes. And again.

A quick google (via tablet) gives me one idea to try, which doesn't do anything.

And then I have the bright idea to try the other profile on my laptop, "Administrator", which popped up a few weeks ago when I had to give myself admin privileges to run one of the disk recovery tools I was trying to use on the desktop machine.

I get straight in (no password), but because I've never used it before it runs through the basic Windows account setup. And almost nothing works, because it's a different profile to the one I'm set up to use.

So I log out again, to give my own account another try, and it logs me straight back into the Administrator account, I'm not even getting the option to log into my own profile anymore.

*Headdesk* *Headdesk* *Headdesk*

To say I was panicking at this point was an understatement, I can't just not get at my own profile, I can't get at the passwords associated with it, I can't get at my browser bookmarks, and what about my files?

My big worry was I would now be unable to get at any of my files, given problems with both machines, but fortunately it turned out I can still get to them through C:\users\david. So my first priority was to get them onto an external backup drive (my previous backup scheme was to keep copies on both laptop and desktop on the theory both wouldn't be out of action at the same time - that worked well).

So I grab laptop and external backup drive, and have a quick look at how much free space I have on the backup drive - probably plenty, but clearing some more wouldn't hurt. On the backup drives were a bunch of old backups and I decided the quickest way to clear space would be to merge those together. It worked. But quick it wasn't.

The first two backups I merged took about 24 hours to finish. Which wouldn't have been so much a problem if I hadn't set the laptop and backup drive up together on the middle of my bed, and once I'd realised how long it was going to take, it didn't throw up an estimate until about 4 or 5 hours in, I didn't want to stop. As the spare bed is currently covered in disassembled desktop I ended up sleeping on the couch....

Fortunately all the other backups were much smaller and it only took a few hours to merge them together, and about an hour to copy my current stuff off the laptop onto the backup.

So tomorrow's job is to figure out how to recover my profile. *tired headdesk*

Current Mood: Stress-puppy
Current Location: In bits
Current Music: Under Pressure, Queen

So you may remember I've been complaining since March about my desktop machine not recognising the keyboard after Windows updates, requiring various intermittently successful USB driver shenanigans....

To which my eventual response was to stop Windows updates.

And where my working hypothesis was some sort of incipient USB hardware fault given it would eventually recognise keyboards if left there long enough. Though the fact it appears to affect keyboards and memory sticks, but not mice was just plain wierd. Affecting both front and rear USB ports, which are separate hardware, may indicate it's a motherboard issue (aargh!).

Anyway, the plan was no updates until Windows 11 appears (and maybe not even then).

But Windows found a way.

And so Wednesday night last week Windows started to updated overnight, but didn't finish the process.

When I found it turned off on Thursday morning I realised what had happened (I knew it was threatening to update, but thought I'd successfully rescheduled it for a week ahead), so I powered it up, logged in with mouse and onscreen keyboard, and left it to sort itself out.

Eight hours later it was still making no progress, so I power-cycled it as the only way of intervening with no keyboard to CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Which necessarily meant it did its didn't shut down properly routine, whereupon it decided it wasn't happy with the boot drive, and set about repairing that.

Next time I checked it was showing a Dell tools screen, and wanting me to select whether to invoke more Dell tools, or try rebooting again. And selecting between them with the keyboard, the one it doesn't recognise. More power recycling as the only option.

As of this morning it is recognising the keyboard again, but the two options I get on powering up are one) either the improper shut down spiel then into the Dell tools, or two) directly into the Dell tools, which are now demanding recovery media. I do have a recovery USB stick. But the USB doesn't seem to recognise it (or at least selecting that option doesn't do anything but refresh the screen, two of the other options appear to do the same rather than taking you to other pages and the last option is the firmware and I'm not going there). If left on its own it will power-off after five minutes

This is not good.

TLDR: USB has failed, Windows update has failed, boot drive may be borked, but who can tell? And fixing either problem may depend on fixing the other first.

My next step is to open it up and pull the drives to check them in an external enclosure, but I'm struggling with what to do beyond that. Suggestions, or sympathy, gratefully received.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Location: CSI: Cyber's autopsy suite

Aaargh!

Windows updated last week and took out my keyboard again. And this time I couldn't get it to recognise it by forcing a reinstall of the USB hub driver.

So I've been doing stuff that only needed the mouse, or the minimal use of the on-screen keyboard for a week now, and I'm definitely (key)bored with it.

I was using the PC a couple of hours ago and it definitely wasn't working. I just came back from watching some of the Olympic rowing and swimming, sat down, started typing from force of habit, and it's working.

*Headdesk*

Windows Update is now turned off, and it's staying that way until Windows 11 if I have any say in the matter.

Current Mood: *headdesk*
Current Location: Boarded out

Windows: "We have scheduled an update"

Me: "Don't wanna!"

Windows: "It's almost time for your update"

Me: "Really don't want to do this, but you're going to do it without me if I don't, aren't you?"

Windows: {Tries to look innocent}

So I left it to have its wicked way with my computer overnight, and came back to it today. Press the on switch and the login wallpaper appears. Well, that's a good start. Bring up password box, ditto. Type in password box, uh-oh...

Keyboard comprehensively dead. Try second keyboard. Also comprehensively dead. Finally think to try the accessibility options and bring up the onscreen keyboard, which gets me in.

Windows: "Oh, hey, there's a keyboard."

Windows: "No, my mistake."

Windows: "Oh, hey, there's a keyboard."

Windows: "No, my mistake."

Windows: "I am installing a keyboard driver. I am so clever."

Windows: "No, my mistake, no keyboard there."

Dell Support Assistant: "Hey, you need an urgent BIOS upgrade."

No shit, Sherlock!!! (Though normally flashing BIOS is the one thing I hate more than Windows updates. Such a good way to potentially brick your computer).

Every digit and limb crossed that it seems to have fixed it.

Current Location: Keyed up

So I've been psyching myself to submit to Pitchwars, whose submission window was today (actually they opened the window early, late Friday but I was relying on having 'til today to finish stuff)

This involved:
1) Finishing the latest novel draft (10 hours yesterday)
2) Switching it to submission format (6 hours today, it was taking out that blank line between every para that was a bugger)
3) Picking my 5 chosen potential mentors from the 108 on offer, which was mostly done.

And then I went to look at my analysis of the mentors, and realised that Windows had rebooted itself, and the file had never been saved. 108 mentor bios (each on their own website) to re-read through* to find the ones who would consider an Adult Urban Fantasy/Police Procedural crossover, with a deadline of Midnight EDT (5AM BST), and I didn't get to that until after midnight local.

Fortunately I only really had six mentors who would consider my MS, and one of those didn't mention SF/F, so the choice was simple, but finding them was a race.

Submission finally made at 3:30AM, and all the holiday prep I was supposed to do tonight didn't happen, so the stress roles on into tomorrow.

*And some of them were almost unreadable, this doesn't strike me as the greatest advert for their skills. There were a couple I never did work out the age range they were covering (and that's a mandatory match with your MS)

Current Mood: stressed
Current Location: Pitched