Microsoft update problems; Yay for my backup plans!
Posted on August 2, 2010, under Technology.
Microsoft released a critical security patch (MS10-046) that hosed my Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit machine. After the patch installed, I click the button to reboot, but it never finished. It froze on the screen that said, "Preparing To Configure Windows. Please Do Not Turn Off Your Computer." Even the little spinner had froze. I finally powered down the machine, but I couldn’t get Windows to boot even in Safe Mode.
I did have a plan though. I booted up my Windows 7 emergency System Repair Disc, and attempted to go back to a previous System Restore Point. Every time I tried though, I received a failure error of 0×80070057. (*Spoiler Alert* After I restored my computer, I realized I had turned off Systems Restore for all my drives. Sheesh, not sure why I did that. Probably to save disk space. Lesson learned.)
That left me with one option to get Windows back up and running without too much pain. In the menu of the System Repair Disk, I selected System Image Recovery, since I had scheduled weekly full backups of my system. (You do too, right?)
After successfully running the system image restoration process, a few of my files were now a week or so out of date. When I logged in, up popped my Carbonite client. It had recognized that my system had just gone through a recovery, and gave me options on restoring my files that were either out of date or missing. I selected the files to restore, and now my system is back up and running! Sweet!
The change I will be making to my backup strategy is enabling System Restore Points on my C: drive.
Summary:
- Create a Windows System Repair Disc
- Enable System Restore Points on the System drive (C:)
- Schedule weekly System Image backups
- Purchase a Carbonite subscription, and use the recommended backup settings
- Be a little skeptical of emergency patches
Dad on September 26, 2010
Nightmare!!!