Security Updates Failed - Tried to exit loop - Broke my set up :(

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

So last night about 1AM I decided to restart my computer, and there were 13 updates so I though what the hell I'll just get them out of the way now. So I restarted, and it took ages and nearly one hour later I'm sitting here watching a blue screen stuck on 32%.

Not sure if I did the right thing or not but I decided it wasn't working or stuck somehow and so I turned it off and on, and well to cut a long story short I have pretty much screwed the whole system up. Eventually I managed to get back into the desktop, after many times turning it off and on and then it was running slow, locking up, programs not opening. I turned off a few start up features and I am now currently backing up all the data that was on the hard drive onto an external pending a full system image recovery.

I'm just wondering if there will be any problems with this. Should I perform this from a command prompt in boot or if I'm able to go through windows?

....or should I just update to Windows 10 now and hope that works? I'm intending to do that soon anyway?

Is there anything I can do in the meantime, perhaps reinstall the failed updates?

What is the safest thing to do at this point?

bigmck · 13 Jan 2016

Windows 10 IS NOT a solution for getting Windows 7 to work. Eliminate that thought for now. == When you say you turned the PC off and on. I hope you do not mean OFF and one second later back ON. You should leave it off about 30 seconds before turning back on. A quick OFF and ON is bad for the PC. == Do you have a Windows 7 DVD or a Recovery Partition on your PC? Do you have Windows 7 on your C: drive and your Personal Documents on a different Partition or is everything on C: ? Answer all and let us know and we can proceed.

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

Yes unfortunately I mean off and straight back on. I thought it was just bad to turn it off like that, I didn't know what else to do.

I have all my data backed-up off it, I managed to at least save all my recent work files. What was still on there wasn't too important though as I have most of the other stuff backed up already.

I have two disk images that I created, one when I got this on an external drive and another later one. I'm going to go for the first one. I can get the OS to start up, and I have deleted all my files on there and ran a few things on Glary, but it's not responding, locking up and generally any functionality is hit and miss.

I have no Win7 DVD, although I may have an iso file I downloaded some time ago somewhere. I'm hoping I can recover the system using the disk image on my external though.

I was just going to follow the instructions on here, but not sure what method is the best, I guess from command prompt at boot?

System Image Recovery[2]=Backup%20Restore

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

OK I'm going to go ahead and follow the instructions in that link. I have done this before. Just want to check it's the best course of action and if there are problems I may encounter.

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

Not sure what I'm doing here, I switched on and held down shift+f10 and it took me into some Vaio care wizard. Not quite sure how that works and if I need my ext drive, or if it will delete all my other data on my external drive.

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

I tried this from command prompt at boot and it just hangs after the part where I type diskpart, then it says 'the screen saver can't run because it requires a newer card or one that's compatible with Direct3D'

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

Maybe the VAIO factory reset option is my best course of action? I hope someone can advise me what the right thing is to do before I do the wrong things and make the situation worse than it already is.

bigmck · 13 Jan 2016

You say you have an image of your system? Does this include your Windows 7 and your Personal files? Tell me what software made the image? We can proceed from there. Don't go and try a bunch of things. Answer a few questions and we can get you going. Waiting for your response

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

I just did a factory reset in the end, took ages but it worked and now everything seems to work fine.

Now going to download all the updates and hope it the same doesn't happen, and try to set it up better than before hopefully.

I'm thinking about using Glary Utilities and running a zero hard drive on it, would you recommend Glary? It was recommended to me by the 'guy in the shop' who seemed to know what he was talking about.

Also thinking about going with this upon his recommendation. Apparently McAfee and Norton have flaws that leave them open to vulnerabilities. In the meantime are there any better options to MES out there or is that still the best free one to go for?

https://shop.eset.co.uk/

STU9000 · 13 Jan 2016

bigmck said:

You say you have an image of your system? Does this include your Windows 7 and your Personal files? Tell me what software made the image? We can proceed from there. Don't go and try a bunch of things. Answer a few questions and we can get you going. Waiting for your response

Sorry you went offline and I needed to get this fixed. Like I say (see previous post) I decided to go for a factory reset. Now I know what the 'assist' button is for. Handy little lifesaver that thing.