I have a Lenovo Ideacenter H50-55 PC desktop (2 years old, Windows 10 Home, 1x AMD A10-7800 Processor) which stopped booting after the last Windows update. I removed the HD, ran check disk from another latop on the HD, no issues. I backed up files successfully.
After I reinstalled Win 10 from the Lenovo service partition, I quickly installed Norton and began downloading Win updates. I moved some old files (mainly music files) from the backed up files, downloaded some applications. Windows had about a dozen Win updates to run; it seems to have completed about 9 or 10 of them and was getting stuck on one in particular. I gave it about 2 or 3 hours to complete (it didn't), then decided to restart the machine. To my surprise, Windows 10 wouldn't boot. I tried to do a system restore but it failed there too.
So I'm ready to begin the process again. Perhaps it is a coincidence that Windows update caused the system to not boot on two separate occasions. But I have to consider the possibility that some issue is persisting after the Windows reinstall.
My current suspects are:
- Some hardware security issue on my Athlon processor related to Spectre. My bios is dated 2014, and I have to believe that it has been updated since this time.
- some hard ware corruption of the master boot record
- that I may have accidentally exposed or retriggered a Windows virus
- Windows update process for my hardware is just defective.
I have 3 basic questions:
- what should be my sequence for hardening my PC after reinstalling
Windows 10 again from the Service Partition. I.e., should I focus
first on Lenovo-related updates (like BIOS, etc) rather than Windows
updates? Should I try to install all the Windows updates at one time
or perform them one at a time (or at least restart numerous times to
provide multiple restore points). - I have a commercial version of Norton AV. Are these sufficient for
scanning the master boot record or identifying boot sector issues? - Are there any third party tools for identifying whether my hard
drive or processor is permanently damaged? Before I chose to
restart, Windows was working practically perfectly.
Thanks for your help.
Best Answer
Well, I did not arrive at a satisfactory answer.
I reinstalled Windows from the service partition, updated the bios and Lenovo drivers. Then I updated Windows, separating the updates between restarts for extra margin of safety.
During my 2nd reinstall, one of the updates broke my Comcast-provided Norton antivirus program, so I had to remove and reinstall.
I don't think that updating the bios and drivers immediately made any difference (the bios was last updated in 2017). but who knows! I do think that isolating the Win updates contributed to solving my problem -- although I have no way of knowing for sure. I'm guessing that the Spectre vulnerabilities is probably what caused the most recent Win updates to be so complicated and brittle. But I could be totally wrong!