Windows 7: Patch Tuesday Aug 16 wiped me out

I woke up Wed morning to a blue screen and the words:

"Preparing to configure Windows.
Do not turn off your computer."

Well, I wasn't happy with that, but I thought I'd wait and see if it went away. It didn't. 10 hours later, I turned off the laptop, and when I finally got the thing kick started again in safe mode, it wouldn't run the system restore - not one out of about 10 of them.

Dell did put a data rescue program on the laptop, and it recovered some of my files, but it didn't recover the Google Earth files I spent months developing. GE was on at the time, and I think it crashed the files. I looked in the appropriate directory, and they just weren't there. Not even the backup file. Zippo.

First off, wha happened? Shouldn't the updates check to see if any programs are open and close them, especially something as touchy as GE?

Did anyone else have the same problem?

I know I should have set the dell to ask before update, but I suspect that MS wants the access and so directs the manufacturers to toggle it on. Why else would they do that?

Why wouldn't any of my restore points work?

Last, I assumed that GE destroys files if it crashes, but the entire directory was empty. Why was that?



Thanks for any help you can give.