Windows 10 update bugs causing lockup on bootup

Hi, have you been using disk imaging routinely and regularly?
So often recommended here so you can rescue yourself from difficult situations by restoring your PC to a previous good state.
E.g. Macrium Reflect (Free) + large enough external storage.

Or, have you enabled System Restore, so you can trigger a restore point having booted your PC from a live boot disk or Win 10 install disk?

If you have not taken these basic precautions you could be in difficulty.

Create a live boot disk and boot your PC from it and check your disk. E.g. Bob Omb's or Kyhi's boot disk.
- was there a reason that led to you doing a clean install?

Good. Please confirm- is this an update or upgrade? What exactly is it that is failing?

If you're unsure, you can use a 3rd party tool to scan for updates - e.g. WUMT - Windows Update Minitool - that lists them with checkboxes.

Manually install this Windows Update, KB4578968 and restart, then try updating Manually from this link https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

That update is not installed.

Now here is whats interesting, I checked my currently installed updates (remember I said I havent done any before this).

It has kb4601393 installed a windows update service stack update.

On my other 2 LTSC machines which I setup using the same image, neither have that update and WU says they up to date.

Sadly I cannot uninstall it, the button isnt there.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...e-f27bbb2e52b3

It is very recent, and this update could be whats breaking it?

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I wiped the windows update directory, still a no go.

I will try to do one update at a time to see which one might be failing but I think it is related to this new stack that got released on 9th february. Also one of the updates is super slow, it was nowhere near that slow to install on the other machines and whilst the laptop isnt high end hardware, its still an ssd for storage and a mid range 2017 cpu. It wouldnt surprise me if its that specific update that will fail when I do one at a time.

Also time for image restore again, back to hanging boot, in over 20 years of using Windows, I have never seen anything like this, but this is also the first time I have been using windows 10 on production machines. (the permanent boot menu got me into safe mode, but within a second of the desktop been up the diagnosing your pc boot menu appears taking over, then a exception error with startrep.exe)

Using wumgr I installed them all except kb4598230. Thats the one that fails.

- - - Updated - - -

Well I got there in the end.

So like my other machines I have in group policy to defer quality updates for 14 days.

However it looks like somehow on my laptop a update newer than 14 days sneaked on it (servicing stack update), I expect the jan 2021 cumulative update requires the previous servicing stack so I had to disable the defer and now I managed to install the feb 2021 update.

The boom out of this though is I discovered wumgr, and love it so will take the positives as well as learning the importance of synchronisation of updates. Thanks to all who offered assistance.

Glad it worked out for you. Not all are so lucky!