KB5011831 Windows 10 Release Preview Build 19044.1679 (21H2) Insider

Done ver 19044.1682

WU KB5013942 and .NET update KB5013624 installed yesterday. Computer would not boot, hanging at black screen with ball bearings animation in white near the bottom of the screen, nothing else, for hours. This has happened many times before, so I tried the simplest fix that has worked in the past, a power-down reboot. Hung at same place. Second method, booting on rescue media and running a boot repair that fails, then "Exit to Windows" worked.

There are further methods: full system restore from Acronis backup, then run update from a downloaded file is the big hammer that I have used a few times in the past. Another method that I have found recently is to restore the system disk from Acronis, then run a reinstallation of Windows 10 while keeping my files and apps, which installs the latest updates as part of that process. These weren't needed this time. I mention them to make sure that people who come here and see this know that WU does not truly brick your machine if you are resourceful. And, keep a recent Windows recovery/installation memory stick or optical drive available. I have a recover/installation Blu-Ray for Windows 10 21H2 that I used.

SFE and DISM ran without finding problems.

In opening things up and checking out apps, I noticed that MBAM real-time protection was turned off. I suspect that this is one of the things that the Windows RE did when trying to fix the boot problem. Next Update Tuesday, I'm going to disable MBAM real-time protection before I boot. I may disable real-time protection from Acronis and Norton, too. This may make the monthly failure to boot go away.