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Windows Update disaster - recovery help, please!

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rjbull:
Windows Update disaster - recovery help, please!

I run Vista Home Premium, when it will let me.  It has automatic updates.  I get tired of the interminable disk-thrashing and resource usage of Windows updates, which mean I can barely use the laptop while they're downloading, but until recently things have worked properly afterwards.  Last week I was cursed with a toxic update. After rebooting, it wouldn't let me into my user account, saying that it couldn't start a Windows service.  It would, however, let me into the admin account, though without Internet access, again because it couldn't start a (different, I think) Windows service.  Oh, joy.  Lack of Internet access nowadays means no easy way to get help.

Symptoms:
Access violation at address 00723159 in module "oauie.exe."  Write of address 00000050.
--- End quote ---

WiFi said Connection status: Unknown.  The dependency service or group failed to start.
--- End quote ---
Tried Diagnose > Windows Wireless Service is not running on this computer > Start Wireless Service > Windows cannot resolve this problem.  Please contact your network administrator or ISP.
Well, the admin is me.  It's my own machine.  This is Vista Home Premium, after all.

From the admin account, a bubble appeared from the tray:
Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service.  This problem prevents limited access users from logging on to the system.  As an administrative user, you can review the System Event Log for details about why the service did not respond.
--- End quote ---
Of course, being Windows, it doesn't tell you the exact name of the log, nor its location.
         

I didn't know what to do.  My first glum thought was to restore from a disk image, glum because I knew the image would be out of date, and I would lose things.  So I set out to back up as much data as possible to a removable drive, knowing most existing backups would be at least slightly out of date.  Windows UAC keeps accounts in sealed boxes, so even though I could load SynchBack Pro, it behaved as a new unregistered program and I couldn't quickly work out how if at all to pick up its configuration. Likewise with TheBat!, which was serious because that's my e-mail. I copied over all data files I could think of using Total Commander, which has a very nice directory synchronization feature. Windows doesn't make this easy because data seems scattered all over the place. Then I wanted to check what programs I'd installed since last disk image, so looked in Total Uninstall to see if it could make a simple list.  It can, but, I also found it had a menu entry, System restore. Ah-haaah... I'd forgotten that, never having had to use it before. So, with little to lose, I tried it, rolling back the latest update, and after rebooting, everything was back to normal.

My first act then was to get out the external drive and make a new disk image.  I found the last one I had was six months old, and my data backups were a month or two old as well.  Mea culpa...  Main point arising: take mouser's constantly reiterated advice to heart - BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!

Now, a day later, the system has downloaded what are presumably the same poisonous updates, because it's done the same thing again. Once more I've had my time wasted on endless downloading, once more I've had to roll the system back, and I feel condemned to a Sisyphean treadmill of repeating the process.

Please can DC help with help on the following?


* Can anyone please recommend a good disaster recovery pocket book?  Something small, to be consulted by fuming people in a hurry, maybe a compilation of trouble-shooting charts, not some massive and pricey tombstone?
* How do I turn off automatic updates? 
* If you're in an admin account, is there a way to run a program as if you were the user, so you get access to the user account's configuration settings and data? Sort of the inverse of elevating from user to admin?
* Who can I complain to or warn?
* And will they listen?
* Given Microsoft's near-monopoly status, and the unimaginable amounts of money it makes, why aren't its products better?  <sigh>
More disk-thrashing...  must be downloading the Update from Hell again...

Stoic Joker:
Set the updates to let me decide if/when to install updates. Then you can run the updates manually and select (or de-select) what you want installed.

Then install the new batch of updates one at a time, til you find the bad one. When you find the bad one, pull it back out, and select hide this update in the WU list settings.

kyrathaba:
+1 to what Stoic Joker said.

Incidentally, I've had good luck doing simple file/dir mirroring or full backups using FBackup4 (no affiliation, and I use the free version). +1 to what Stoic Joker said.

Incidentally, I've had good luck doing simple file/dir mirroring or full backups using FBackup4 (no affiliation, and I use the free version).

Curt:
Start > Control Panel > Windows Update > (in left margin:) "change settings"

cyberdiva:
I second/third/fourth the recommendation that you change your Windows Updates settings from Automatic to Let Me Decide.  But that by itself may not be sufficient, since many of us don't know how to tell whether or not an Update will turn out to be the Update from Hell.  That's one reason I subscribe to Windows Secrets, a weekly online newsletter with columns by several knowledgeable people.  It comes in both a paid and a free version, and I'm under the impression that the paid version asks you to pay what you feel you can/want to (but I could be misremembering).  I get the paid version.  In it, and perhaps in the free version as well, there's a column devoted to providing guidance about Windows Updates.  I hold off installing any until I've read that week's edition of Windows Secrets.  There's also a free Windows Secrets forum where all things having to do with Windows are discussed.  I have found it helpful on occasion.  However, what I really value is the weekly Windows Secrets newsletter. 

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