Windows 7 Update Bricked My Rig

[Saulkar]

Yup you heard it here first, a Microsoft service pack 1 bricked my laptop and left me unable to game, animate, model, or draw for a whole of 36 hours, woe is me! So anyway I could not recover anything on the disk as the operating system completely flopped, system files were corrupted beyond recovery and thus the computer could not even boot beyond the startup splash screen. So what did I do in light of this devistating event? I did what every PC elitist does. I sucked in my gut and got to work. First I had a free diagnostic by a computer technician. To put it in laymans terms, the C drive was physically intact but the operating system was unusable until I reinstalled it. I then took it home and used the family computer to burn a copy of Ubuntu to a flash drive then booted my computer from it.

I then used Ubuntu to scavenge my way through the C drive (It was a f!cking mess!!!) and thankfully collected every last piece of data I needed intact, and then some, transfering it all to E drive. (225 gigs) After that I reformatted the C drive, reinstalled windows 7, ran a disk scan, now I am smiling pretty as I tear my hair out knowing I have to reinstall nearly 15 drivers and relicense 9 2D/3D/Plugins/Video editing packages to bring my laptop back up to par.

So how did you react when your computer last bricked, how did you handle it, and did everything work out in the end? Did you have a bittersweet happy ending like me? Tell your story. :3


EDIT: Turns out this was all for naught. The C:\ drive itself was in fact damaged from the update and had to be replaced. It worked for a little while before completely dieing. MY editing of the registry while stupid was not the cause of the catastrophic failure. The hard drive got fried. I took it to another technician who had seen this more than once and is giving me a discount on a brand new SSD, ie. The normal price before the Taiwan incident sent prices through the roof.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I swore a lot and called my dad. Then I waited two days for him to come over and do all the steps you mentioned. I lost all my games and had to reinstall them. Since most of them were on Steam, I busted my download limit and had to pay 50$ extra on my internet bill the following month. Kept my Oblivion saves, though. Those were vital.

Oh, and I hate when Windows downloads those updates without telling you shit (how big are they, anyway?) and then nags you to reboot your computer every few hours. Is there a way to prevent it?

 

[Saulkar]

I've never seen it happen. Your problem, for example, could probably have been solved by going with Windows repair from your install CD (you do have a legal copy right?) or with the restore/repair utilities provided by your computer manufacturer.

I've also never seen that type of catastrophic upgrade failure unless there was 1d-10-t user error.

You should also of course had an automatic backup in play to let you recover all critical files with a couple clicks. And you should have run a fresh sysimag right before upgrading so that you with 3 or 4 clicks you have been back EXACTLY where you started.
Win 7 didn't brick your rig, you did.

I did not bother to mention that the operating system was already going, the bootup time was nearly five minutes and the shutoff time was 20. I had tried tampering with my computer's registry to fix a game and borked it so that was my fault. The update just pushed it over the edge.

I did have a data (not system but I had that as well) backup but unfortunately it was very old, I did not do one within the past couple of months so it was useless to me. My fault. ^^;

I tried Windows repair from the CD that came with it but every time I tried I was told there was an error and would I like to try again or something like that and went no further. Also my computer did not come with any tools to repair the system. Compooters fault.

Also I had an automatic system backup setup but that was borked as well, the computer was not even trying to boot after the splash screen. I could still bring up the boot menu from it and select every drive, partition, or external storage medium to no avail. Even tried unplugging everything from it except the power cord. Compooters fault?

I am no computer technician. I do my backups (when I remember, DOH!), I defrag my disks, and I keep my drivers up to date after purging the old version from the computer. I do scan disks and virus scans regularly, I remove dust from it every month, and keep her shiny. I just do not know everything there is and in turn contributed to her failure. But who cares, it all worked out for me even though I made mistakes and completely kludged it. :3

 

[Saulkar]

Oh, and I hate when Windows downloads those updates without telling you shit (how big are they, anyway?) and then nags you to reboot your computer every few hours. Is there a way to prevent it?

Sorry I do not know, I know how to take care of my computer (at the basic level, to some extent) but I do not know how to stop Microsoft from installing manditory updates. The past few times I have dicked with my operating system never turned out good. Exept this time it dunn died on me. I am da fool.

 

[Dango]

I repeatedly pressed the power button.

It's still broken.

 

[Joccaren]

I got annoyed, tore it open, then found numerous problems.

My CPU Fan had more dust in it that our vacuum cleaner, and it took half an hour to clear even half of it out, the SATA cable linking my hard drive to my motherboard has a slightly broken 'clip' at the end, and was sliding out of the hard drive, causing my computer to just stop one the one screen forever as it tried to read the hard drive it had become disconnected from, the power supply had somehow 'killed' itself and started to supply bad power and one of my RAM sticks had somehow managed to crack.

It was a good thing I was thinking of building a new rig anyway. Now, I won't have the CPU fan problem again, I use liquid cooling, a new SATA cable fixed the hard drive problem, I have a new PSU and new RAM. I'm lucky it died when it did, my dad was over in America and was able to get me my parts cheap. $300 spent on a 2600K, 12Gb of RAM (Excessive I know, but it was only $20 or so so why the hell not?), a P8P67 and a water cooling system. The PSU I just stole his so all was fine there too.

Oh, and I hate when Windows downloads those updates without telling you shit (how big are they, anyway?) and then nags you to reboot your computer every few hours. Is there a way to prevent it?

Sorry I do not know, I know how to take care of my computer (at the basic level, to some extent) but I do not know how to stop Microsoft from installing manditory updates. The past few times I have dicked with my operating system never turned out good. Exept this time it dunn died on me. I am da fool.

Its not a mandatory update, but a recommended one. Go into your control panel, System and Security menu, Windows Update Menu, click 'Change Settings' in that bar on the left side of the window, then select the option you want under the 'Important Updates' field, as well as anything else you want to edit.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Last time it happened?

I got a new laptop.

(It was a long time coming.)

 

[Saulkar]

Its not a mandatory update, but a recommended one. Go into your control panel, System and Security menu, Windows Update Menu, click 'Change Settings' in that bar on the left side of the window, then select the option you want under the 'Important Updates' field, as well as anything else you want to edit.

Oh I know that, me installing the service pack without repairing my computer first was entirely my fault. I just got the impression that the other guy was talking about those updates your computer informs you that it had downloaded without first asking you then gives you a timer as to how long you have before your computer turns off. You can stop them altogether in the Important Updates field or am I misunderstanding you? Sorry.

 

[Joccaren]

Its not a mandatory update, but a recommended one. Go into your control panel, System and Security menu, Windows Update Menu, click 'Change Settings' in that bar on the left side of the window, then select the option you want under the 'Important Updates' field, as well as anything else you want to edit.

Oh I know that, me installing the service pack without repairing my computer first was entirely my fault. I just got the impression that the other guy was talking about those updates your computer informs you that it had downloaded without first asking you then gives you a timer as to how long you have before your computer turns off. You can stop them altogether in the Important Updates field or am I misunderstanding you? Sorry.

I believe you can stop them altogether, maybe not wholly in the important updates field, but certainly in the settings. I haven't updated windows since I first installed it, you just need to pick the right settings to tell it not to download and not to install any updates. That or completely disconnect yourself from the Internet, but that seems a bit extreme XP

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The last time I had a computer completely brick on me was with a 10 year old (at the time) computer that I was using to play DOS games on the actual hardware. I was not happy when it died, but that was because we were still a few years out from the average computer being able to run some of my favorites [edit]using DOSBox[/edit] (especially Daggerfall, which runs great now, but not so much back in 2005), and while VDM sound got the sound working, that wasn't enough in the (fairly frequent case) where there was a more serious incompatibility between that specific game and early-mid 2000's operating systems than just needing a sound card emulator.

As for what I did about it: waited a few years for DOSbox to get to the point that it emulated all of the games I owned, and played other stuff in the meantime. That was pretty much all I could do, short of tracking down more outdated hardware, and my parents really wanted me to get rid of the stuff I already had, so more wasn't really an option.

Edit: Oh, by the way, this was a hardware failure, not a software failure. There isn't all that much to fail in a copy of Windows 95 that's fully updated and not connected to the internet, but 10 year old hardware? Yeah, that has a tendency to fail.

 

[Gmans uncle]

Crap, good thing I keep windows update off. Sorry Microsoft, I don't need your defective updates thank you very much.

 

[evilneko]

That reminds me. I should make use of my copy of Acronis TrueImage more often.

Incidentally though I have not had a computer of my own "bricked" (particularly by an update) in....years.

Well, there was that incident with IE8 on my XP64 desktop but that was resolved with a manual system restore via the recovery console.

'course I also never migrated to Vista or 7.

 

[Worgen]

I had the service pack 3 update for xp destroy one of my hard drives, the drive just didnt work anymore, nothing I could do to save anything, I had backups but they were from like 8 months before since doing backups on dvds is annoying.

 

[isometry]

I've never seen it happen. Your problem, for example, could probably have been solved by going with Windows repair from your install CD (you do have a legal copy right?) or with the restore/repair utilities provided by your computer manufacturer.

I've also never seen that type of catastrophic upgrade failure unless there was 1d-10-t user error.

You may never have seen windows update corrupt the OS to the point it can't boot, but I've seen it happen dozens of times in the last decade. The acceptable rate of failure in consumer computers is very high compared to e.g. FAA standards that require computer systems on jets to have failure probabilities less than one in a billion, and aircraft manufacturers spend more money on code testing and maintenance than anything else. There is no such thing as a failure rate of 0%, and so in the real world of non-life critical software the industry pushes updates even knowing they will brick 0.001% of installations (which translates into hundreds of thousands of effected installations).

Win 7 didn't brick your rig, you did.

The best way to prevent this kind of problem is to turn off automatic updates, and generally avoid updates unless the benefits are great, or the risk of not updating is high.

A common misconception, promoted by Microsoft to consumers but not to their corporate customers, is that postponing or not accepting updates greatly increases the risk of the computer being compromised. There are some specific cases where this is true (e.g. very old versions of flash, adobe reader, internet explorer), but most of the time the benefits of micro-updates are outweighed by the risk that they will break the system. This is why computer installations that are used for work, rather than play, are usually better off avoiding updates whenever they can.

 

[Erana]

For the past four years, I've never gone more than four months without some instance in which I have to reformat my hard drive. Multiple different computers, different companies, desktop and laptop, different OSes, different everything.

Computers just hate me that much, it seems.

And I don't use the porn, and I don't go sticking my nose all around pirate stuff, either, if you were wondering.
Though now that I think of it, significantly lower risk of computer viruses are a huge perk of asexuality.

Right now, I was installing Oblivion and trying to play it has bricked my Wine so I reinstalled it, but files that I thought were unrelated to Wine are missing now and my computer's been a bit funky lately (weird flickering unrelated to hardware 'n such) and its been a few months and I'm worried I'm going to have to reinstall my OS again...

Urgh. Its flickering again. Fuuuuuuu...

 

[teqrevisited]

Luckily my PC hasn't ever given up. Most of my technology has some kind of stubborn resolve that keeps it soldiering on regardless of whatever happens to be wrong with it. However it has had a long period of time that was plagued by the dreaded BSOD, something like 7F 0x08.

I ended up rooting around in the BIOS and found that my CPU multiplier had gone insane and decided that the safe operational limit was too dull. Quickly knocked the whole system down to safe speed then back up to max and it's been fine ever since.

 

[tharglet]

I've also never seen that type of catastrophic upgrade failure unless there was 1d-10-t user error.

I saw xp sp2 brick a laptop - had to do a repair, a pre-patch and repatch it. Was a documented bug that sp2 would brick some laptops. One of my friends got unlucky and the patch stopped their machine from booting.

 

[tharglet]

Never had a brickage unless the mobo I possibly kicked to death counts (machine wouldn't consistently do the same thing when starting up, often managed to post but failed to try and boot a lot). Was time for a PC upgrade anyway

Did have my hubby accidentally manage to bust the install of the TCP/IP protocol on XP. Ended up having to reinstall windows for that one.... seeing as XP doesn't really let you uninstall TCP/IP and thus doesn't offer to reinstall it ><.
Any documents/user-files I keep on separate physical drives to my OS, so if in the rare instance it goes pear-shaped, it's a whole lot easier to recover. Also have pretty much all the stuff I care about backed up somewhere else, so a hard drive loss wouldn't be that catastrophic, just annoying.

 

[EHKOS]

Oh, and I hate when Windows downloads those updates without telling you shit (how big are they, anyway?) and then nags you to reboot your computer every few hours. Is there a way to prevent it?

Yes, turn off automatic updating.

OT:Yeah a Vista update fucked with my drivers so I just did a system restore. I've battled many bricks for fun though. On old computers.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I have a kind of machine empathy, mine let me know when something is about to go south. Right now my primary data drive (not my operating system thankfully) is starting to tell me she may be near the end of her life. It saddens me, it was my first 1tb drive and now I will have to replace it.

Haven't had my machine brick on me, only because I have caught what was failing and replaced/fixed it before it could happen.