Weird behavior at restart, please help analyze error reports.

That's a good outcome- you're fortunate.

*** Please now as an urgent priority create a disk image of your new Windows.

Now, I would expect you will receive another significant update quite soon.

As you have Pro Go to Settings, Updates, Advanced.. and select Defer feature updates.
That will defer the Creator's Update as you know.

Now you can also take control of Windows Update. This is what I do:
Using (for convenience) Winaero's free tweaker (it gives the full manual equivalent if you don't trust such tools) I have set Windows to notify only. No unexpected downloads or restarts.

Attachment 138189

Read the instructions carefully. It's confusing.
a. Click Check for updates. Wait.
b. Click the button on the tweaker.
c. Check you see this (text at bottom).
Attachment 138190

Yes, I would recommend leaving some unallocated space on your system disk as I said for future situations.
You can see I have 2 450Mb recovery partitions (one not used) - this is not uncommon.
Attachment 138191

dalchina said:

*** Please now as an urgent priority create a disk image of your new Windows.

Right now, or after the update that is currently downloading finishes installing?

EDIT: As the download is progressing at a fairly quick pace and I didn't have time to wait for your answer, I created a Macrium backup. However, I still need to know if I need to create one after the update is downloaded and installed.

As you have Pro Go to Settings, Updates, Advanced.. and select Defer feature updates.

It's already selected.

A Windows MAcrium image is best created using options
Backup, Windows Backup (or there's an option to click on on the left with a longer title that's the same thing).

This will give you a popup picture with all your Windows partitions selected.

Once you've created your base image (bigger, slower) you maintain your image set through the lifetime of your Windows by creating differential images (smaller, faster, the difference to the base image). Do this periodically and before/after each major change.

Restoring requires 1 base image + 1 differential image.

At longer intervals, repeat the whole process to create a new image set.

This can be done on a schedule, but that means your backup disk remains connected- not a good idea.

dalchina said:

Read the instructions carefully. It's confusing.
a. Click Check for updates. Wait.
b. Click the button on the tweaker.
c. Check you see this (text at bottom).

Those instructions that you wrote down were slightly incorrect. I tried it in that sequence, and it didn't work. Then I read what Winaero Tweaker itself said to do (click the button in Winaero first, then check for updates) and it worked.

Yes, I would recommend leaving some unallocated space on your system disk as I said for future situations.

How should I achieve this? I take it that AOMEI itself can't do it, as it runs within Windows. Is it necessary to use some program that runs on a bootable disc? And what are the risks that it could corrupt my Windows partition?

Also, should I try doing it with AOMEI while Windows is running to see if it's possible, or is it too risky to try that?

dalchina said:

A Windows MAcrium image is best created using options
Backup, Windows Backup (or there's an option to click on on the left with a longer title that's the same thing).

This will give you a popup picture with all your Windows partitions selected.

Once you've created your base image (bigger, slower) you maintain your image set through the lifetime of your Windows by creating differential images (smaller, faster, the difference to the base image). Do this periodically and before/after each major change.

Restoring requires 1 base image + 1 differential image.

At longer intervals, repeat the whole process to create a new image set.

What advantages do backups made using this method provide that the full disc backups that I currently run don't? It sounds much more complicated and work-intensive. The way that I currently do it, one file contains everything, and there is no need for extra files. With a previous computer, I successfully used it to restore my system many times.

EDIT: Does the free version (which I use) even include the option to make differential backups? According to this page, it doesn't:

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50143.aspx

How should I achieve this? I take it that AOMEI itself can't do it, as it runs within Windows. Is it necessary to use some program that runs on a bootable disc? And what are the risks that it could corrupt my Windows partition?

You set up what the PM is to do, usually 'Apply' the change, then restart to have the change applied where that can't be done online.

I would expect the Help documentation makes that clear.

Or of course you could use a boot disk- longer-winded.

Macrium- it takes me about 9 minutes to do a differential image of my SSD-based Windows over USB3.

I don't know what your full disk backup method is so can't comment

An elementary search shows MR free offers differential imaging. It doesn't offer incremental.
Attachment 138241
Macrium Reflect Free

I'm sorry for the delay, but I've been running errands for a large chunk of the day, then later ran into some more computer trouble. I was going to create another backup (in preparation to using AOMEI to create some unallocated space). But I ran into a problem. I restarted my computer, and it froze on the BIOS splash screen. This has happened to me before (on my last computer before this one). Basically, it's a bug caused by when I restart the computer with a particular exterior hard drive plugged in and turned on (due to complacency - I should have learned by now never to do this), then restart it or turn it off and back on again with the drive turned off. The computer tries to find the drive that it thinks should be there, and thus gets permanently stuck, never booting up. The only solution is to turn off the computer via the power button, which I did.

As I always do when this bug presents itself, I restored the computer to the most recent Macrium system image in case the forced shutdown caused any system corruption (in this case, the system image that I restored to is the one that I made right after the Anniversary Update installed but while another update was downloading).

The problem is that I now see a failure message in Windows Update (presumably because I had made the Macrium backup while Windows Update was downloading an update), which makes me worried that I've corrupted something in my system (I assume that failed updates cause system corruption, at least if they fail during the actual installation process rather than the download process, and the fact that Windows says "failed to install" rather than "failed to download" makes it sound like the former). Here's the part of Windows Update featuring the error message:

Attachment 138379

Windows Update now says that it is downloading an update (seemingly the same one). Here's the message:

Attachment 138377

EDIT: Here's the Windows Update history after I finished installing the update that was downloading in the above picture and also downloaded and installed a few more updates until Windows said it was up to date:

Attachment 138390

The updates seem to have successfully downloaded ind installed, but I fear that it is too little and too late to stop any permanent damage to my Windows installation from the first failure. I might have to reinstall the Anniversary Update over again to make sure of getting rid of any corruption.