Windows update strikes again

[John Vere]

Been a long time since had any computer issues so was a bit taken aback by this 

Thank goodness it’s my office machine and not my main DAW. 

Last night as I shut down it said Shut down and Update. Fine this is normal. When I got up in the night I noticed the glow from the office. It said something about failing to update and a few options I can’t remember what I chose but it might have been try again. In the morning it was still stuck.
 I tried every option offered and it kept sending reports to MS and promised to fix it but nothing worked.
The only way out of the loop was to re install windows. 
I’m now starring at 3 pages of apps that are missing.  

I just spent a lot of time updating all my Cakewalk plug ins even installed Sonar X1 just to get V Vocal. I’m not impressed. 
So I just unplugged the LAN cable from my main DAW. It’s going to stay that way until CbB times out 

Anyhow don’t have a clue why a machine that’s had W10 on it since the “ free” upgrade and always ran smoothly bombed out on a routine update. Just posting in case others have this issue and as a caution ⚠️ 

Edited January 15, 2021 by John Vere

[RobertWS]

Microsoft kept trying to install their browser Edge on my machine.  I already have a browser.

Using an update to install an application is ****ed up.

You can put this in a batch file and run as Administer to get rid of it:

 

cd %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Microsoft\Edge\Application\8*\Installer
setup --uninstall --force-uninstall --system-level

 

They have finally stopped trying to install it.

[TracingArcs]

I don't know if it's connected. But I updated yesterday (accumulative update for 20H2) and found my MS account locked due to "suspicious behaviour" WTF. Had to jump through hoops to get it back. But not pleased. My music desktop PC is for music only. I go online only for updates from MS and VSt. But I was locked due to this as if I'm phishing etc.

[John Vere]

I think it’s my OS hard drive. I was just re installing my apps and on a re boot it gave the same repair message.  Luckily it did re boot. Just made a recovery drive last night and will go buy a new drive today. It was a 7200 1tb so time for a nice SSD drive anyhow 

[abacab]

Once you have fixed it, I would recommend using a good disk imaging program to make a system drive image on an external drive, and then create a bootable recovery drive on USB flash to restore that image if ever necessary. One option is Macrium Reflect Free, which can do both reliably, and there are others.

Beats re-installing Windows every time Windows or the hard drive crashes.

[John Vere]

Good advice. This is my first (possible) hard drive failure in a very long time. I generally replace OS drives every 4 or so years. This one was way overdue. 
And I also don’t mind the rebuilding part because it’s a great way to clean up all that useless stuff that ends up in there. I use this machine to test new software and VST’s before committing to my main daw.  

the worst of it is companies that require deactivating a computer first and if you forget to do that you have to contact them and beg for mercy 

 

[abacab]

1 minute ago, John Vere said:

the worst of it is companies that require deactivating a computer first and if you forget to do that you have to contact them and beg for mercy

Plug-ins protected by iLok are the worst in that regard. You have to email each publisher to remove your activation for a computer that you can no longer access to do it yourself.

For me that's: AIR, Akai, Eventide, Metric Halo, Softube, Sonivox, and UVI.

Waves is a strange animal. If you don't move your licenses back to the Waves cloud first, you will likely have to burn your once-a-year Waves license recovery privilege.

Most other cases require either a simple reactivation, or a visit to your account online to remove the computer to free up an activation, like Celemony/Melodyne or XLN Audio.

[John Vere]

Yes it's Air that will cause me grief!  I just went through that. I contacted them, didn't hear anything other than an auto reply for a week. In the end I got lucky and still had the original HD for the Laptop I had used. I put it back in and managed to de activate.

  I'm not sure what will happen now and maybe I better install iLock and see what it says about this computer. It might still recognize the hardware. 

[John Vere]

@abacab   Thanks for the reminder I managed to deactivate this computer. vJust going downtown and PU a Kingston SSD 480 GB drive> All they have around here but I think Kingston's are OK.  Only $80 Can. 

[abacab]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

@abacab   Thanks for the reminder I managed to deactivate this computer. vJust going downtown and PU a Kingston SSD 480 GB drive> All they have around here but I think Kingston's are OK.  Only $80 Can. 

You're welcome!

480GB should be fine for a system drive. I'm using a 500GB with plenty of room to spare.

But regardless of the brand, if using SSD you should definitely make a backup image. SSD can die suddenly and unexpectedly. Rare, but definitely annoying.

I helped a friend build a new computer a few years ago. He installed a Samsung EVO SSD. After seeing how that performed, I went home and ordered me one of those before I went to bed that night!

Two years later he called me because his computer wouldn't boot. It said there was no boot drive. After spending time on the phone troubleshooting, swapping SATA ports and cables, told him to bring the drive over. Hooked it up to my PC, drive was dead as a brick. Plus he had no backups, except some docs that he had saved online.

Moral of the story: always back up your stuff. Images are really the easiest way, because they capture everything in one shot. My original Samsung SSD is still working fine 5 years later, and I bought 2 more. SSD failures are rare and random, but you never know...

Edited January 15, 2021 by abacab

[John Vere]

Almost everything important I keep on One Drive. I also have stuff on Dropbox and Google drive. All my photos are on iCloud but I dump that to data backups as well. All the cloud drives are backed up to data drives. 

Probably Cakewalk projects are the most critical to me and they are backed up to the moon. When a system drive dies I only lose my software installs. 480 GB is overkill for a system drive the way I use them but it's nice to not have to fuss over storage room. This is the last post on the machine, after I send this I'm tearing it apart! 

 

[abacab]

1 minute ago, John Vere said:

This is the last post on the machine, after I send this I'm tearing it apart!

Good luck!

[John Nelson]

I was updating a family member's machine this week (W10 Home) and the latest feature update got locked into spinning ball mode after the "restart your computer now" juncture.  I physically powered it off and back on.  The update assistant advised that the install failed so I did it a second time... installed correctly, no problem.

It seems crude but the off switch worked this time.

[John Vere]

All up and running.  I took the clean install route and it’s a fresh install of windows 10. It seems to keep track of the computer and it shows the same name etc in About. 

just running the updates and tomorrow will dive into installing all my software. 

 

For those who are curious about rebuilding their Sonar/Cakewalk empire my plan is as follows

Out of curiosity run Latency Monitor 

First install driver’s for interface and midi keyboards   

X1 bare bones to get true pianos and vvocal 

Install command centre 

copy all the data from my back up of the ccc download folder to the new folder 

Run ccc and install everything I use 

Install Bandlab assistant 

Install Cakewalk

Install 3rd party vst’s etc 

Next ILok and reactivate computer

XLN manager and activate 

Scan an activate inside Cakewalk all that require this  

Set up my workspace an SC save 

Run Latency Monitor again and see if anything changes 

did I miss anything 

 

 

 

[abacab]

9 hours ago, John Vere said:

did I miss anything

That list looks very detailed, and will probably do the job. Been a few years since my last clean in stall, so my memory isn't all that fresh.

But one thing I always do in addition to my audio interface and MIDI drivers, is to check for the latest video drivers and system drivers for the motherboard (BIOS, LAN, onboard VGA, Chipset, etc.) at the manufacturer's website. If you have a discrete GPU, check for those drivers too.

If you do not install the actual manufacturer's drivers, you will get the ones that Microsoft thinks that you need. That is sometimes OK, especially if your PC hardware is past end of life. Buy I prefer to rely on the official drivers whenever possible, except maybe in the case of the PC peripherals, such as mouse and keyboard.

Fortunately this process isn't as bad as it used to be. If a manufacturer uses "class compliant" drivers, they are already part of Windows, and are plug and play. I have seen a few MIDI controllers that use these.

Some other manufacturers have supplied their drivers directly to Microsoft for USB devices such as Wi-Fi adapters and other things, so they are pre-installed in Windows. Again, plug and play.

Good luck!

Edited January 16, 2021 by abacab

[msmcleod]

FWIW I had major issues upgrading from 1909 to 20H2 ( by the time I'd given up trying to upgrade to 2020, 20H2 had already come out).  I tried easily about 30 times before I got it right.

I was getting constant BSOD on the second reboot.

The issue in the end was down to drivers, the two in question were Korg's USB driver (for the nanoKONTROL series) and NI' s CD image driver (which AFAIK is only used in Windows 7).

Removing both of those drivers allowed the upgrade to proceed successfully.

So my recommendation if you're having upgrade problems:

• Backup your HD as a complete image somewhere ( I personally use Clonezilla, but there are plenty of others). You want a FULL backup though, not just an incremental one.
• Make sure Windows is up to date with all updates by running Windows Update.
• Make sure your drivers are all up to date by going into Device Manager, and checking each one for updates
• While your in Device Manager, remove any drivers you're not using by using "View->Show Hidden Devices" and removing the unused ones - your machine may restart when removing some of them.
• Check there's no issues with your Windows install, by running the following within Windows PowerShell:

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Checkhealth
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth
sfc /scannow

• If you get errors, run this:

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

• Make sure you have enough free disk space - you want at LEAST 60GB free.
• Unplug any USB devices / PCI cards you can - preferably everything apart from mouse & keyboard.
• Run your upgrade
• If you get errors, run DriverView:   https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html
• Take a look at the manufacturer list, and uninstall any software you can re-install later - focus on music software manufacturers & 3rd party utilities. You don't want to remove any Microsoft drivers, or motherboard drivers.
• Run DriverView again to check those drivers have been removed - if they've not, you can remove them manually by renaming them to [name].old within C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\
• Reboot
• Run through the checking process (the DISM / sfc commands) again, and try the upgrade again

[user 905133]

37 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

FWIW I had major issues upgrading from 1909 to 20H2 ( by the time I'd given up trying to upgrade to 2020, 20H2 had already come out).  I tried easily about 30 times before I got it right.

I was getting constant BSOD on the second reboot.

The issue in the end was down to drivers, the two in question were Korg's USB driver (for the nanoKONTROL series) and NI' s CD image driver (which AFAIK is only used in Windows 7).

Removing both of those drivers allowed the upgrade to proceed successfully.

Glad you mentioned this (re: Korg's USB driver). I will be getting back to setting up a new-to-me PC with Win10 20H2 as a replacement as my main audio productivity PC. I have not yet moved either of my nanoKontrol[1]s or the Korg driver/setup utility to the new PC. For that reason, I have some related questions:

• After you upgraded to 20H2, did you reinstall/setup the Korg driver/utility without any issues and if so does your Korg nanoK work properly?
• If so, did you have to do anything special to get it to work?
• What kind of a removal of the drivers did you do (total/complete removal, device properties uninstall, simple disable, etc.)? I ask because sometimes just disabling a device driver has worked for me to solve other compatibility issues until I have done some more fine tuning.

Thanks.

 

[msmcleod]

12 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

Glad you mentioned this (re: Korg's USB driver). I will be getting back to setting up a new-to-me PC with Win10 20H2 as a replacement as my main audio productivity PC. I have not yet moved either of my nanoKontrol[1]s or the Korg driver/setup utility to the new PC. For that reason, I have some related questions:

• After you upgraded to 20H2, did you reinstall/setup the Korg driver/utility without any issues and if so does your Korg nanoK work properly?
• If so, did you have to do anything special to get it to work?
• What kind of a removal of the drivers did you do (total/complete removal, device properties uninstall, simple disable, etc.)? I ask because sometimes just disabling a device driver has worked for me to solve other compatibility issues until I have done some more fine tuning.

Thanks.

 

No, I've not re-installed the Korg KONTROL Editor since upgrading.  I've got a dual (actually quad) boot, with Windows 7 64 bit and Windows 7 32 bit on it, so if I need to use the editor I just boot up into Windows 7 64bit (I use the Windows 7 32 bit boot for running even older Korg stuff like the X5D(R) editor, which I think is actually 16 bit).

IIRC, to remove it I did the following:

• Uninstalled the Korg KONTROL software
• Renamed KORGUM64.SYS  in C:\Windows\System32\drivers  to KORGUM64.SYS.old
• Rebooted

For the Native Instruments driver ( NIWinCDEmu.sys  )

• Renamed NIWinCDEmu.sys  in C:\Windows\System32\drivers  to NIWinCDEmu.sys.old
• Rebooted

I guess you could try to re-install the Korg KONTROL Editor, but it wouldn't surprise me if you get a BSOD on bootup - it doesn't look like it's Windows 2020 / 20H2 compliant.

[msmcleod]

@User 905133 - ok, it's official... the Korg USB drivers (used by the Korg KONTROL Editor) aren't supported in Windows 20H2:

https://www.korg.com/download/global/support/os/pdf/win_compatibilitychart_KORG_en.pdf

It's right at the top of the list.

[John Vere]

Typing from the updated machine. I forgot what a difference a SSD drive makes- Holy cow this machine is running fast now. It's just an i5 duo core 3.20Ghz. 16 GB RAM

I built it myself from a bunch of parts that were mostly on sale I think it cost me $350 including a nice case and 750 watt PS. I have the 480 SSD and then 3 older 7200 1TB drives. One is the old OS drive which looks like windows renames Windows.Old so won't boot from it.  

Question while I have your undivided attention- How do you set permissions? It keeps asking for permission to copy files etc.