Did Anyone Else have the December Microsoft Windows Automatic Update cause bootup problems?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

I'm running a homebrew AMD CPU system (Athlon 4800+) on an ASUS motherboard with Win XP Pro SP2.

A week ago my PC went into some kind of infinite startup loop, where it would be unsuccessful trying to load Windows XP, then flash very briefly through a blue screen of death (so quick I couldn't read the message), then try to load Win XP again (the splash screen with the marching blue boxes), then fail, BSOD, repeat.

I appear to have fixed the problem by rolling back the December automatic update (I rolled back all the December updates to be sure, including the Internet Explorer updates).

Here are the steps I took:

- Boot into safe mode, including safe mode with networking, which worked, able to web browse etc., files in file directories looked fine.

- Tried (while in safe mode) to choose "Disable Startup Upon System Failure" option so I might be able to at least SEE what the message on the BSOD was, but it didn't change the infinite loop behavior.

- Tried "Last Known Good Configuration" bootup, which did not help. Has this, in the history of mankind, ever gotten anyone to a successful Windows boot after a crash? I haven't seen it. It appears to exist only to mock me in my misery and pain.

- While logged into safe mode, I used System Restore to restore to a point before the crash, about a week earlier. Still stuck in startup loop.

- Logged into safe mode, then used the Add/Remove Programs part of Control Panel to remove all December Windows Automatic Updates (you have to check a box that makes the updates show up in the first place), including the ones for Internet Explorer.

- While in Safe Mode, I ran msconfig (from the "run" prompt of the start menu), and chose "Diagnostic Startup" as my boot option, a non safe mode start, but one with minimal drivers and programs.

- Success! Diagnostic Startup was successful. From here I ran msconfig again and changed the boot option to "Normal" startup, with all programs and drivers. The next startup was normal and worked.

- Of note: I neglected to deactivate Automatic Windows Updates, which I had set to automatically download and install. So the December updates installed themselves again on Christmas Day and resulted in a different type of boot issue. No BSOD, but the startup would get stuck in the Windows XP splash screen forever. (Black screen with XP logo and marching blue boxes.)

- I essentially repeated the steps above, this time removing the Windows Updates installed on 12/25, and going through a "Diagnostic Startup" again, eventually leading to a successful normal startup.

- I changed Automatic Update to where I have to manually download and install the updates now.

I don't know if there are steps I can take to tweak my system so that the December 2008 updates no longer break the Windows startup, but I obviously have no intention to install these updates until I can figure out a way to prevent this problem from recurring, I'm assuming one of the updates causes a driver conflict or something.

Hopefully these steps can provide someone else a way out of this mess if it happens to them. If anyone has any ideas on how I can sidestep this problem, I'd be interested.

[Duer 157099]

1. Some thoughts

First I will say that I don't know what your specific problem may have been, but I can add to your troubleshooting arsenal and describe what I would do faced with the same situation.

I would disable the Automatic Update function, at the service level (ie, Run > Services.msc) There are 4 services that are required for AutoUpdates to function properly:

Automatic Updates (wuauserv)
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
Cryptographic Services (CryptSvc)
Event Log (Eventlog)

I completely disable the first one (wuauserv) - the other 3 may be/are required for other things. That's my first line of defense against mysterious computer behaviors. But then, I keep alert via other means as to when I need to go get a critical update, so be aware of that if you plan to disable this.

2) In answer to the rhetorical question about "last working config" being useful ever, I have to answer that yes, I have found it to save me from myself. In the registry, there is an entry with your last working config, and if you have mucked things up really badly, upon reboot you can opt for that and it will retrieve the last good working config -- so if it does not work for you, then your issue started before the last prior working boot, OR someone somehow altered those settings in the registry (wouldn't put that past malware) OR it has nothing to do with the registry (eg, immenent hardware failure, corrupt file somewhere, like a driver or other critical bootup file like ntdetect.com or ntldr or hal.dll)

For reference, the registry key in question is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select

That key will show you the ControlSet status (there are usually 3 similar keys, CurrentControlSet and then a couple called ControlSet001 and ControlSet002 (or 3 or 4 or whatever) - those are the backups, so don't mess around in them because they just may save you some day. CurrentControlSet, however, can be played with with relative impunity since you can always opt for the "last good working" one if you get into a mess.

If you know how to alter your boot.ini, you might want to add the "sos" line to it (or post here the content of your boot.ini file, in your root directory (eg, c:\)

Often when the bootup hangs where you describe, there is a disk check running in the background, and if it's the complete one, it can take quite awhile.

The fact that the System Restore did not help is a good clue, but I'm not sure yet what it means - I'd have to think about it further.

It's good to know that there is a backed up version of your registry that you can get ahold of if need be - the 5 "hives" are located in the c:\windows\repair directory. If you get into real trouble, you can go into the Repair option (if you don't know what that is we can post further) and just swap out all of those registry "hives" with the original ones.

I've got more thoughts but will post this for now, in case any is useful to you. I've got some good links I can dig up and post later.

editing to say that upon re-reading your post, I agree with your conclusion, that it's a driver issue. Perhaps use the manual update and tediously add the updates one at a time until you find which is the culprit?

also adding a couple of links that, while very detailed, may prove useful to the insatiably curious:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2007/06/19/how-windows-starts-up-part-1-of-4.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2007/06/28/how-windows-starts-up-part-the-second.aspx

[CK_John]

2. This sounds like the AMD problem caused by SP3 upgrade. Look at

Jesper Blog which issued a quick fix.
<http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/05/08/does-your-amd-based-computer-boot-after-installing-xp-sp3.aspx>

[Duer 157099]

3. Yikes, good link

Have I mentioned lately how much I dispise MS? Oh well.

All of my machines are AMDs so I bet at least one of those problems afflicted at least one of my machines recently, although I've gone through so many troubleshooting gyrations lately that I no longer remember where I started, much less what any actual problems turned out to be or how they were solved ::sigh::

If the OP has kept up to date with all updates, I doubt that an SP3 issue would just now appear, although... really, with MS, anything is possible.

But here's a link with the Dec 2008 update summery, fyi:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-dec.mspx?pf=true

Why oh why didn't I migrate fully to linux last year (or the year before) when I was considering it...

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. Good thought, but I checked for this, and that intelppm registry key does not exist on my system.

It's one of the first AMD/Windows problems I came upon in my research and I was hoping that would be the solution to my problem, but I installed the OS myself onto a fresh AMD system and there was no intelppm registry key.

But those are very good articles.

[Duer 157099]

5. I'm going to park a link here

Something I found while terrifying myself reading that site about the AMD issues.

This might have a useful clue in it for future reference - and while not at all directly related to the OP, it does relate in a very tangential way (in the sense of wanting to move one drive elsewhere in the event that such bsod events persist, that sort of thread)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082

Besides, once I see this sentence in a MS bulletin, I get interested: "Although Microsoft does not support this method..." (it usually means some good info follows)

Parking another link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/160963

(this one might prove relevent and useful, I'm going to try some things though first before further comment on it)

[Duer 157099]

6. I just had another thought

When you look at the registry key I mentioned above (the one that shows which ControlSet you are currently using) it also shows you which ControlSet most recently failed - and you *may* be able to take a look in there to see if anything obvious jumps out at you. Or find one of those programs that does a comparison and compare the two registry keys to see where the differences lie?