Problem after latest Cumulative Update

[britechguy]

A client just dropped off his Lenovo ThinkPad that has a Core i5 processor, and it has encountered an issue that I have not personally seen before.

After booting up, and logging in, the desktop remains black, and you get a two messages (probably only one, but the cycling occurs repeatedly). The first is the message frame "Location is not available" with nothing in it, followed, after it disappears, by this one:



It seems to me this is likely a variant of a corrupted user profile, but I'm not sure and I certainly don't know exactly how to proceed here.

If someone knows exactly what this is, and what to do next, I'd appreciate the assistance.

P.S. In running Lenovo Diagnostics, the CPU has passed all quick tests and memory has passed all the tests that have been done so far. I don't suspect a hardware issue here, but wanted to be thorough.

 

[Porthos]

System restore?

 

[britechguy]

After a Cumulative Update, I doubt it. I also don't think I'd even be able to get to it, as I have to use CTRL+ALT+Delete to even get to the power button, the taskbar never populates entirely and I can't get the windows button on it to respond.

Just got the triple-hard-power-down option to trigger Recovery Mode to work, so I will give System Restore a shot.

Nope - didn't work. There is a restore point from prior to the cumulative update that was applied overnight last night, but as per usual (as I have found System Restore to be very unreliable over the years) I'm getting the, "System Restore did not complete successfully . . .," message.

 

[phaZed]

I think you are going to want to edit the registry (Likely via Boot CD) and make sure that the paths under here are correct:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

 

[britechguy]

At the moment I've kicked off the "Uninstall latest quality update" feature under Recovery Mode, since this is what appears to have precipitated the event to begin with.

Will report back.

 

[britechguy]

Well, the uninstall worked, but the end result is exactly the same behavior.

I may see if there is a System Restore point further back that will "take" if I try to restore from it.

I suspect, in the end, this is going to end up being a "retrieve user data then nuke and pave" situation. But I need to talk to the client about how they wish to proceed.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@britechguy, there is no desktop in that folder... %systemroot%\config\systemprofile is the user profile used by the system account, which is used by various services. There is no desktop... there is no documents... there is no... anything but appdata, and the user registry hive file.

So to have a system whine about this, indicates a fundamental corruption of Windows, and yes... a nuke and pave is the best way forward. I suspect that unit was upgraded from Windows 7/8, and somewhere along the line things went very wrong. The Monthly CU didn't cause this, it's just a catalyst. Malware can do this damage too.

 

[britechguy]

Actually, I can say from looking on the case of the computer itself that this particular ThinkPad X260 started out life with Windows 10.

I've managed to trigger a Windows Repair (not that I think it will ultimately work). I'd just really like to be able to get in, even in safe mode, so that I can copy off the user data without having to do a drive pull, which is a PITA on virtually any laptop these days (and this one is no exception after having looked at the service manual).

Regardless of what has happened, I doubt very much that the actual data on the HDD is lost. The system still boots, so even if "the usual access" is gone, I figure the worst case scenario is needing something along the lines of TestDisk to get the data back.

 

[Porthos]

I can copy off the user data without having to do a drive pull, which is a PITA on virtually any laptop these days (and this one is no exception after having looked at the service manual).

Win PE and Fab's. Do it all the time without pulling drives. I only pull drives when replacing.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Exactly what Porthos said... Heck you don't even need FABs, you just need a USB drive and the ability to use a command line copy command.

FABs does make the process really easy though.

 

[britechguy]

True. I can even use a bootable Linux distro as well.

At one time I far prefered to just pull the drive, but that's when there were bay doors and it took two seconds to get the drive out.

These days I seldom have a situation such as this one presented to me, so I'm rusty.