BSOD muddle Language packs stop win update and now DISM repair defunct

botus · 04 Jul 2021

Hope I don't offend... I had first ever win 10 BSOD for no apparent reason this week and by a miracle system restore undid it ( I forget why I think I was just looking on a normal windows settings page to see what language packs it had ???) Then did the same again (system restore fixed) and its not crashed since.

Trying more advanced why - I was in event viewer and saw two issues did one ms recco fix on re enable wear out the hard drive with search and then another took me to pages saying language pack stops win 10 updates.... but since wiped logs so I could see whats new. But seems the BSOD or restore has caused much more fun than I was in already

But it now working as it had.... normally to the user but no updates apply

clearly microsoft threw teddies after just after win 10 20H2 19042.685 went on in Dec 2020. This week I realise forcing 20H2 worked but the language pack thin killed it again??? With me "breaking it" adding the UK language pack after the machine came to life for 3 day in dec 2020 when adding GPE work it up from a MS induce patch reboot loop and got 20H2 to install

Now clearly the machine is a mess. But it boots and works for the user after system restore got me passed to BSOD issues when doing NOTHING other than looking at why it being odd

can you offer any thought on this. Some of the ramble below was before I knew about your log tools

_zipIt.vbs temp.txt Windows 11 Compatibility Checker.zip win 11 checker was all after BSOD happened

- History of MS induced fun

I had similar issues to many without updates for a year - then 6 months of crashing and uninstalling after it tries to apply MS security patches in a non stop boot loop - (obviously not my main pc) this stopped after I loaded GPE from a major geeks reg tweak.

Then all was great for about 3 days , it turned on and off and pulled in loads of updates then offered to move to 20H2 where I ended up stuck with 19042.685 in Dec 2020. Got a patch in Jan then refuses to load any and none of the ideas or tricks gets over it.

I ran setupdiag it just crashes out
MS Driver check gave the all clear
repair and reloading only offers to wipe the machine clean and was doing that BEFORE the current failure on DISM Restore Health issues no longer complete.

Two weeks back

SFC /SCANNOW
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

gave the all clear

tried using clean boot and tell it to find patches I have saves on the machine doesn't find them even if the path is correct
run manually it does all the work and on reboot always says coudn't do it undoing and reboots where it was

This week
found the bit about if you added a language pack the world ends, so removed UK and went back to std with USA only. The machine removed UK and reverted to USA on its own and was "happy". But still won't load any seurity patches.

used below to load UK pack MONTHS ago and now realise it was exactly after 20H2 first went on !
and this week used the same to uninstall using the same method

How To Install Windows 10 2004 Language Pack Manually: [20H2]
Windows 10 language packs in the links above are in .cab file format.
In order to install them manually, see the steps below.
1 – Press Windows + R keys on the keyboard to open the RUN dialogue box.
2 – In the RUN box, type lpksetup, and press enter.
3 – Click on the Install display languages option.
4 – Find the downloaded .cab file and select it from the location where you saved it on PC.
5 – Now hit the Next button and wait for the language pack to install in Windows 10.
6 – All done.

FRIDAY NIGHT
did all the DSIM stuff again but now throws teddies - but the wifi dropped out (when it says online does it mean online hand hold?). Tried again after a reboot with a network cable this morning

SFC /SCANNOW
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
all works as expected but then RestoreHealth throws errors

Gave up - then did a successful restore point and started again - after seeing third party win 11 compatibility check that had been failing on this machine was updated.

win 11 update checker to v0.3 and NOW runs on this machine....
intriguingly the win 11 update check, claims all is OK except for TPM "missing"
and its showing red on both those boxes (TPM = thermal protection monitor ???)

so I tried to update the intel chipset drivers to "more suitable but not signed" and windows blue screened the reboot
queue another successful restore point pre this weeks muddle up.

SUNDAY

rebooted upon restore successful message this morning and the machine is up and running.
it booted OK and I went about the same remove UK language pack and turn on and then rebuild indexing.

Set a restore point and this time

SFC /SCANNOW (no errors)
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

all completed successfully

rebooted the machine and set a new restore point

another reboot all good and then MS pushed
06 2021 dot net update
a windows AV update
and an MRT update

on reboot these have killed the machine

twice going back to the last restore point, each time having said successfully rolled back - now reboot - the machine is stuck in a crashing boot loop

then tried to uninstall last update it says can't, a pending update precludes, try wiping the machine - crashing boot loop..... gave up

- - - Updated - - -

its all gone wrong

RJARRRPCGP · 04 Jul 2021

The HDD, PSU and the motherboard are suspects. Possibly bad caps on the PSU and/or motherboard.
(The HDD could very well be bad!)

badcaps.net

botus · 05 Jul 2021

thanks for the reply and the idea. Had a machine where caps went on the CPU power and it was really odd, much more than this machine. I think it's more likely MS driving PC sales on behalf of hardware vendors

if I don't want it patched then its as reliable as any other PC... But with MS having got caught adding code to destroy the heads on conventional hard drives with Win 10, they invented any driver that doesn't work, Wifi that turns off for fun and now CPU microcode that they know will crash the PC unless the BIOS / UEFI has been enhanced with a recent update. But of course that's won't happen unless its 2 years old or newer. How convenient

- - - Updated - - -

so what does this silliness in UEFI I just found mean.... it wasn't but it now tells me

the HDD password is frozen

and with a few tricks I can unlock it, but then win 10 turns it off on boot and says buy a new laptop

- - - Updated - - -

oh dear funny it boots just fine on my win 7 hard drive

HWiNFO32 Report.txt

BSOD muddle Language packs stop win update and now DISM repair defunct-happy-enough.png

BSOD muddle Language packs stop win update and now DISM repair defunct-happy.png

BSOD muddle Language packs stop win update and now DISM repair defunct-win7-hw-info.png

botus · 11 Jul 2021

its alive..... not sure for how long

After a week of working perfectly using a hard drive with win 7 and getting the last ever 400 meg of updates (it hadn't been on for a while)… I can see its all Microsoft.

Been trying to read what UEFI and secure boot is all about... it seems pretty obvious now, and probably what's stopping so many users pulling in patches. Microsoft worked out if its on UEFI running secure boot which they lock up from user playing - if its old hardware that doesn't do TPM 2 you can just effectively kill it and or at least make it insecure and boot loop friendly so its just easier to sell another laptop and they get their $10 license fee

Now clearly I don't know what I'm doing, but with various battery out, long key presses and unlocking the Microsoft harddrive password they just added, then using other methods turning off secure boot, the machine is back and running.

Its back to offering June dot net which is what kept killing it last round. So maybe I'll get nowhere or maybe its really secure boot (on old hardware) that can't cope with current updates ?

botus · 24 Jul 2021

So it's all normal again !

I 've spend the last week on holiday after last weekend was mostly in a boot loop - blue screen - Bios tweak, blue screen again bit of fun.... That came after discovering they'd wiped all the restore points that had been the only way to get it to boot windows at all, but of course they just blue screen'd the machine as you tried to find the game they were playing...

the loop was after realising Microsoft secretly cause hard disk password "Frozen" in the BIOS and then of course refuses to boot, I turn it off, so they blue screen the machine as they write it back again. So I decide well if we want play that game, I'll write mine first then you can't write to a blank space with your own garbage.

So of course they just blue screen the machine - with little available choices, I was about to give up when I thought well lets remove their Bios frozen yet again and try every option in between saying start up repair.... they say an hour and then blue screen the fun.... anyway after much silliness from advanced options I got to repair online and I went OK you win.....

But then for the first ever time they offered do you want to keep your documents !!! I said yes and it pulled down a fresh copy didn't blue screen and gave me a fresh set up of windows with most of my stuff still there ??? but I discover it's only on 2004 19042.685

Whereupon I thought here we go - no updates forever more... but then 20H2 went on and after a successful reboot, normal MS patch updates load correctly like they haven't for 18 months - and I get in green machine up to date

so its all them and I still don't get why.... they threw a few bits away like CCleaner and they turned on the full keylogger and personal data theft choices "as required"

- - - Updated - - -

100% same hardware they spent 2 years trying to kill off