Windows 10 1709 update messed up my laptop

Spent this entire afternoon fixing my wife's win 10 computer after the big update. I finally ended up turning off the windows search feature that indexes files for the search files feature. Then I had to delete Firefox and download and reinstall it. Fingers crossed, we're back to where she was this morning.

Seems to have been two problems, the first being Window search (disk at 100%) and the second being Firefox.

Dave

I have been hearing that Windows will probably have an update this Tuesday. How do I deal with that if my restart does not work? Would it work for me to just select the windows icon at lower left and choose shut down when update says it needs to restart my computer then wait a few minutes and hit the power button to turn it back on?

OP here. I might roll it back just have not had time to do much as we are on the road to Yuma.
Everything seems to be working fine now except when doing a restart. When restarting like after a software update it looks like it is starting then goes to a black screen like the laptop is in sleep mode. Then I can power off the laptop and re power up and all seems fine.

See my post in the thread above this. You have 10 days to roll back the creators update. After that it's permanent. When you roll it back, they give you the option to just receive security patches which you want to keep. Google "How to roll back the creators up" and there will be plenty of information on how to do it. I rolled it back. It's just a bunch of **** 98 percent of user's don't want, but it adds to the load of the cpu.

olympicman wrote:
Installed the latest Windows 10 1709 update to my formally rock solid laptop.Now when I try to restart the computer it comes back up with a blank screen.
The only way I can get it back usable is to do a hard restart and that does not always work. Even when I just close the lid the screen will not come up without a hard restart.
I have the settings set to when lose lid nothing happens, never sleep.
Any ideas?

The 1709 update was a problem for both my laptops and several others I have used recently. Once you your computer running take a look at Settings/Update/UpdateHistory. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it shows that a "Restart is needed to complete update" but restarting it won't fix the problem. This was the case with several computers I've worked on.

Under updates you can try to see if you are given the option to remove that update; you probably won't be allowed to or even if you are it won't actually do it even though it may act as if it does.

What worked best for me was to go to the Windows update site and to manually download and install 1709. Follow this link: Windows 10 Fall Creator Edition and click on Update Now. This will result in the update being installed and I've had much better luck with the success rate. But be forewarned that this will use another 4-5GB of data.

There are other things that can be done if the problem isn't licked by this approach, but this worked for most of the computers I used it on.

olympicman wrote:
For now I am just not turning the computer off.

"Goal Oriented" Awesome! :C

rk911 wrote:
i've always used the F8 key to boot into Safe Mode. does that not work on Win10?

Well, it seems that if hitting F8 was a well known and convenient way to accomplish a task pre-Win10, then there is a fairly likely chance it will not work in Win 10, LOL.

Windows shortcuts. Nope, changed. Win8 to Win10 shortcuts. Nope, changed. Menu and feature locations. Nope, changed. LOL.

But in direct answer to your question, No F8 no longer works at bootup. If you interrupt the boot a few times it will (should) eventually boot into windows recovery environment, then you can choose troubleshooting, advanced, and startup options (maybe not exact wording) and the next boot it will come up to a pretty version of the screen that F8 used to give you.

MS "official" method is to boot into windows and hold shift while hitting reboot or use msconfig, etc. But if you cannot get into Windows....brilliant :(

Why is this? MS claims it is because win 10 boots up "so fast" that the boot cannot be interrupted. In reality, Win 10 boots up a GUI without all the environment and drivers so it "feels fast" because you aren't looking at a blank screen. Just don't try to perform any functions until it is all loaded up. Slight of hand ;)

A real annoyance right now is Win 10 booting up, mouse can be moved, but then the GUI freezes with no mouse or keyboard input. It is related to the major fundamental changes in Win 10 and has to be dealt with separately (hence the login to built in admin account advice above).

It's a really big problem on the horizon when people use "factory restore" and then win 10 is frozen at first full bootup after the configurations.

...and enjoy "OneDrive" reinfection cycles. Win10 enables it by default on some OEM loads. So if you have backed up a virus to OneDrive and wipe your system to completely reload, it will AUTOMATICALLY and without asking or allowing you to interrupt/disable, download your files to your computer and REINFECT it.

"Dumbing down of the consumer" via smarter than you phones and we know better than you computer systems. We passed "let me help you and automate some things" and fell into "you cannot stop or change what I am programmed to do, here's our ads"

An unfortunate side effect of "reboot and reload" disposable computing. Not much is designed to be "reliable" these days. Just "good enough to make it to the next upgrade" Where is the stability?

An entire programming generation of script kiddies and bloated-packages-based compiled code. IDE is helpful, but do you really need 243 functions just so you don't have to use a different method to calculate the length of a STRING? (nod to JAVA programmers :C )

So there you go. An answer to your question and a bonus explanation and characterization of where we are now and why these kinds of problems exist and persist. ;)

DiskDoctr wrote:
If you interrupt the boot a couple times with the power button
(hold it down a few secs until it turns off), it will boot up and allow you to work into safe mode....

i've always used the F8 key to boot into Safe Mode. does that not work on Win10?

Thanks all for the suggestions I will give them a try when I have time. For now I am just not turning the computer off.

If you interrupt the boot a couple times with the power button
(hold it down a few secs until it turns off), it will boot up and allow you to work into safe mode.

If you can get booted into safe mode, use an elevated command prompt and enable the builtin administrator account, sign out and sign into the admin account, let it setup the profile...it can take 5 mins or more sometimes.

Then try booting into this administrator account in regular mode. If it works, sign out and sign into your regular account. Windows is already loaded so only your profile is loaded and built. Much better if a driver or something is an issue.

See if you make some headway there.