Wasted a complete day

[jaymanek]

Just had to get this one off my chest.

Busy day planned for today.

Came in.. switched on PC.. Windows Update.. Gets stuck at 15%...
Cannot update, reverting.
Stuck on this for over an hour.
Restart PC... gets stuck on a black screen.
Works in safe mode but cant do anything I need to do, even with networking mode.
Some reason, my PC has no restore points... Could have sworn I created one a while back.

So call microsoft support. Helpful lady tried things for 2 hours... says she needs to escalate to level 2 support.. They cant ring me until tomorrow.
Waited a couple of hours, tried to use other computers but some apps I need are local only to my PC. Wound myself up and rang microsoft again. Asked them for level 2 support today. They agreed. Someone called me after an hour or so.
Then 3 hours and 13 minutes of messing.
We were going through process of wiping windows 7 and reinstalling... even that got stuck.
Then restarted computer and guess what... its all working as it should be.

I hate windows update... not the first time I have had issues with it... moreso with my vista laptop.

So now its 19.49 in the evening and I can start the work I wanted to at 9am.

To be fair, support were very good in the end... but even she had no idea how it fixed itself.

Thats a day ill never get back....

 

[tec]

I am a business PC user, and usually only get indirectly spoon fed important security updates, but even these sometimes cause problems.

I would turn off automatic Windows updates if your PC is that critical, and just manually choose the very important security updates.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Jay, do you use any software which is installed on your computer?

Get your office files into cloud storage, and use Google Apps or Office 365, and you'll be able to use any computer or tablet if your main PC plays up again.

Happy to help if I can.

 

[BlackC55]

I feel your pain. I spent a day installing a printer recently. A whole ****** day.

 

[stwat]

My mum gets the same thing often on her windows 7 laptop.

I gave up on windoze a few years ago now. Nothing but problems with updates and crashing etc. I don't need one for businesses or anything so I bought an Asus C300 Chromebook. It has a solid state drive so is ultra fast to boot up and use. Open it up enter password and its up and online in seconds Okay, not a lot of storage but I have an external HD for that plus cloud.
It was the best move I ever made computer-wise.

 

[Stratman]

How many updates were being installed?

I ask because 'clever blokes on t'internet' advise breaking down a large number of updates and installing only two or three at a time.

 

[davidjpowell]

Jay, do you use any software which is installed on your computer? Get your office files into cloud storage, and use Google Apps or Office 365, and you'll be able to use any computer or tablet if your main PC plays up again. Happy to help if I can.

Great advice. I used to suffer from similar issues, now it just works....

 

[Reggie-rock]

It is strange every time my desktop computer updates it crashes and will not restart. I have found a way to fix this problem and has worked 5 or 6 times now.
I unplug everything from the tower, open the side revealing its workings and just gently touch all the main bits and pieces inside, then box it back up plug in and it reboots and everything works fine.
I would guess my repair procedure earth's something or other.

 

[KillerHERTZ]

open the side revealing its workings and just gently touch all the main bits and pieces inside

You risk frying some of the internals on doing that, you should never poke around without having static protection.

 

[grumpyoldgit]

There seems to be a glut of updates recently. I have Windows 8.1 and had a notification on Wednesday that updates were ready to be installed... 39 of the bu**ers, then a further 17 on Thursday. Luckily all went without a hitch, but WTF is going on with Microsoft?

Technology is a wonderful thing until it goes wrong and then it can be a real b*tch. I feel your pain and frustration. Can't get the spanners to fix it and a hammer is always terminal.

 

[John]

Vista is a crock of sheeat (on your laptop).

I would consider upgrading it or replacing it with at least 7 if you can...

 

[gIzzE]

Had this the other day on our epos system, every thing else is Mac, and it was a complete ball ache, sorted it after 2 days but was very annoying.
We don't go online with it, but for some reason we had to update before we could get updates for the actual till software, which is also Microsoft.

I am going cloud based epos asap as I have had it with Windows, just too much hassle all the time. My iMac is 2008 and never had an issue with it, I have had to replace the PC that runs the back end 3 times in that time.

Shame as I really liked Windows 7, if you get issues with a pc you can't just install an image on a new PC and be up and running within a couple of hours, which is what we need.

 

[jaymanek]

Jay, do you use any software which is installed on your computer?

Get your office files into cloud storage, and use Google Apps or Office 365, and you'll be able to use any computer or tablet if your main PC plays up again.

Happy to help if I can.

I do.. Recently set up a Synology Server which backs all up to cloud.
So almost all my stuff is on it.

Only problem are the two main book keeping applications - Sage and the plug in program. Both of them need to work on the computers local C drive.
There is probably a way around it but need to look into it.

Im still having trouble. A lot of things arent working. I guess files got corrupted during all the messing.

Waiting for a call back from Microsoft.

 

[brucemillar]

Take it outside and shoot it. Then get a lump hammer and crush it.

You will feel better even if your computer does not.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

I do.. Recently set up a Synology Server which backs all up to cloud.
So almost all my stuff is on it.

Only problem are the two main book keeping applications - Sage and the plug in program. Both of them need to work on the computers local C drive.
There is probably a way around it but need to look into it.

Im still having trouble. A lot of things arent working. I guess files got corrupted during all the messing.

Waiting for a call back from Microsoft.

Jay, do you use Sage Instant Accounts? You can transfer your data to sage One, which looks like it's Sage's cloud version. Might be worth looking into.

Sage One:
https://www.sage.co.uk/sage-one-accounts

Transfer data to Sage One:
Switching to Sage One Accounts Extra from Sage Instant Accounts

 

[davidjpowell]

Or even Xero and Kashflow which have been cloud based for a long time and for a small business are definitely better value and a million times better to use than sage.....