Scoob
New member
Hey all,
Just thought I'd share my experiences with the recent 1607 "Anniversary" Windows 10 update.
The update decided to kick off just as I went online to check something in Steam last night, so I was sort of "locked in" to seeing it through for a few reasons. One, my BB is slow and downloads take a while, and two, I've shut down during such downloads before and the whole thing has started from scratch next time!
So, the update downloaded and installed, the latter being far quicker than the former, and, after several reboots, I was greeted by the new version of Windows. Different, but the same, some things moved around, some things prettier, many things easier to access or more logically placed. I planned to have a proper look the next day (today) as it was late.
Powering on the PC today, all seemed fine at first, until I noticed my system partition (just 75gb) was quite full. Ah, Windows.old had been created as this was a "major" update. I ran the Windows disk clean-up tool to remove this, but it left a couple of files behind - nVidia files.
Assuming these were just common "locked, but no reason why" files, I removed them without issue and carried on using my PC. I shut down the machine a little while later and get an "Updating your PC" message while waiting for it to shut down. Odd, as PC couldn't have downloaded any more updates as the NIC was disabled.
After a short wait, PC restarts, I log on, get on my desktop and I cannot access the task bar...mouse just goes to a "waiting" cursor whenever I hover over it. I tap the windows key to bring up the menu, it comes up and PC freezes. Hmm. I reboot - had to use reset button - and windows starts up again, I log on, click on the task bar and.... Blue Screen. This happens several times...a Blue screen after being on the desktop a few seconds.
Now, I wonder if *I* broken something by removing those "old" NV files. Maybe they were genuinely in use, despite being in the windows.old folder - which should not happen.
So, I decide to try to re-install my NV drivers...luckily I keep a copy of the latest locally so I do a clean install of those. It appears to work and the PC seems ok now.
So, what happened? Well, from what I can tell my Windows 10 update to build 1607 worked for the most part. However, rather than just being a backup in affect, items from the windows.old folder were still in use by the now updated OS! As a result, removing this folder appears to have broken my NV drivers - causing the freezing and Blue Screens.
Now, I deleted those erroneously in-use files via an elevated command prompt, because a little old school like that. However, the built-in Windows Disk Clean-up tool - if run as an Admin - might do the same, as would CCleaner which has a specific "old windows files" option for just this purpose.
Looking online, I see a few people have had issues after this update - many reverting to doing a fresh 1607 install over their broken build to sort it. Bottom line is, Windows was incorrectly still referencing critical system .dlls from the old build, which caused the problem here.
Note: I've survived several such Windows 10 updates, as well as an original upgrade from Windows 7 and 8.1 on other machines. On each occasion, deleting windows.old - or allowing it to automatically be removed after 30 days - worked without issue.
So, maybe I shouldn't have deleted windows.old, but then nothing there should have been in use either.
Maybe this post will help someone else if they too experience odd issue after the update.
Cheers,
Scoob.
Just thought I'd share my experiences with the recent 1607 "Anniversary" Windows 10 update.
The update decided to kick off just as I went online to check something in Steam last night, so I was sort of "locked in" to seeing it through for a few reasons. One, my BB is slow and downloads take a while, and two, I've shut down during such downloads before and the whole thing has started from scratch next time!
So, the update downloaded and installed, the latter being far quicker than the former, and, after several reboots, I was greeted by the new version of Windows. Different, but the same, some things moved around, some things prettier, many things easier to access or more logically placed. I planned to have a proper look the next day (today) as it was late.
Powering on the PC today, all seemed fine at first, until I noticed my system partition (just 75gb) was quite full. Ah, Windows.old had been created as this was a "major" update. I ran the Windows disk clean-up tool to remove this, but it left a couple of files behind - nVidia files.
Assuming these were just common "locked, but no reason why" files, I removed them without issue and carried on using my PC. I shut down the machine a little while later and get an "Updating your PC" message while waiting for it to shut down. Odd, as PC couldn't have downloaded any more updates as the NIC was disabled.
After a short wait, PC restarts, I log on, get on my desktop and I cannot access the task bar...mouse just goes to a "waiting" cursor whenever I hover over it. I tap the windows key to bring up the menu, it comes up and PC freezes. Hmm. I reboot - had to use reset button - and windows starts up again, I log on, click on the task bar and.... Blue Screen. This happens several times...a Blue screen after being on the desktop a few seconds.
Now, I wonder if *I* broken something by removing those "old" NV files. Maybe they were genuinely in use, despite being in the windows.old folder - which should not happen.
So, I decide to try to re-install my NV drivers...luckily I keep a copy of the latest locally so I do a clean install of those. It appears to work and the PC seems ok now.
So, what happened? Well, from what I can tell my Windows 10 update to build 1607 worked for the most part. However, rather than just being a backup in affect, items from the windows.old folder were still in use by the now updated OS! As a result, removing this folder appears to have broken my NV drivers - causing the freezing and Blue Screens.
Now, I deleted those erroneously in-use files via an elevated command prompt, because a little old school like that. However, the built-in Windows Disk Clean-up tool - if run as an Admin - might do the same, as would CCleaner which has a specific "old windows files" option for just this purpose.
Looking online, I see a few people have had issues after this update - many reverting to doing a fresh 1607 install over their broken build to sort it. Bottom line is, Windows was incorrectly still referencing critical system .dlls from the old build, which caused the problem here.
Note: I've survived several such Windows 10 updates, as well as an original upgrade from Windows 7 and 8.1 on other machines. On each occasion, deleting windows.old - or allowing it to automatically be removed after 30 days - worked without issue.
So, maybe I shouldn't have deleted windows.old, but then nothing there should have been in use either.
Maybe this post will help someone else if they too experience odd issue after the update.
Cheers,
Scoob.
