Failed update 1803

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U3AComputerClass

I have had an attempt to install Windows 10 update 1803 on my large desktop system. After rebooting several times (not sure how many - at least once - it tried rebooting and never got past 0%. I even left it going overnight with no progress.

Eventually I rebooted and the system would not boot into Windows. I tried every offered avenue to recover without much success. I got to a version of Windows that gave me access to my data files but little else, saved the folders that I had been working on since my last backup which I copied to my backup drive. I then restored to my last backup and updated changed files to get back to 1709. This took me about 8 hours from a highly-compressed backup file.

A few days later, after my next full backup and recalling that in the past failed backups had eventually succeded, I tried again, with the same response.

This time, after a recovery my favorite and only game of Sudoku would not start properly and would not install from the original file (it was original installed in Windows 7 or earlier).


In the meantime I have been regularly prompted to allow the update and it is now not giving the option to try at a later time. I have set the instalation time as late as it would allow me and set it to prompt me and hopfully defer it longer.


One possible cause I have thought of is that I have a GEforce GT 7600 display card working at 1920x1080 (the recommended display resolution). I was never able to find a driver that was released for Windows 10 but found that the Windows 7 driver worked (perhaps until 1803). It might work with the generic Microsoft driver but that limits me to an impossible resolution and, I suspect, only a single display.


That is one system. A few days earlier my lenovo yoga X1 went through quite a long update to 1803 which I thought had been successful. However after the incident with my desktop I checked and found that the several hours of updated had left me with 1709 - at least that works. Now I have been deferring the update again until oncer more I have now again lost the ask me later option.


It is totally unacceptable for a major upgrade to fail like this and leave the system in such a state! By now Windows should not be behaving like a Mickey Mouse system with a gung-ho approach to stability. Windows has been developing for about 30 years yet it still behaves as if it is a trivial system on which important systems cannot rely. I want stability, not compulsory major changes to features that I do not want.


Many good features were available in Windows 7 but are no longer possible in Windows 10. One blatant example is the silly desktop which might be fine for a tablet but makes running in a professional work environment difficult. Only limited steps seem possible in altering this.


I also run Linux Centos 7 on a couple of other computers and it runs stably, with no forced updates and the ability to control when and if updates are applied. They also work when released to production. If I cannot run Windows without a hassle I must perhaps try running Centos with the needed programs running under Wine. I haven't used that for many years but hopefully Wine will run the few programs I would rather not do without - Word, Excel and Sudoku. That will be a lot of work in the initial stages but much less trouble in the longer term.


Can anyone help me overcome the 1803 update problems or should I just cut my losses and bite the bullet? Even the ability to freeze Windows at 1709 would be better than nothing although with the resources that Microsoft should have at its disposal the problem should be able to be fixed.


When I started in programming over 50 years ago we thoroughly ensured that everything was totally debugged before releasing a system, not getting to the stage where the system more or less worked once and probably would again one day so it was regarded as fit for release to production.


If Microsoft cannot do better that that, its quality control can only be described as worse than shoddy.

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