Mystery Dell Won't Boot

Install 1809. I have a rule that I NEVER install for client use the newest build until it is at least 30-90 days out from general release. Microsoft doesn't do this as good as they should as the history of 1809 proves. Let someone else beta test this.
 
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I'm with Nline, 1903 exists only in my test benches right now, and will remain so until the end of Summer. 1809 is supported until May of next year, that's what I'm using. Heck, I'm still pushing 1809 out to all the stations still on 1803. I try to keep my business clients six months behind, someone else can be a beta tester.
 
Avoiding a full system reinstall when dealing with Windows 10 and a setup like this one is kinda fruitless for you. Allow me to explain.

This sounds like a fairly "fresh" system. User got it, installed office, installed this other image program and that's it. No heavy lifting as far as reconfiguration goes. Regardless of if the machine has an SSD or not, I wouldn't play around with trying to "save" the original install. Nuke it, pave it, run all the OEM "optimization" software for the latest drivers and what not.. make sure it has all windows updates and if the customer wants you can reinstall the software for him (for an extra fee) that they already had on there.

No way in heck would I try updating from 1703 (or whatever) to 1903 or 1904.

1809 is stable. Use 1809. Don't fart around throwing away dollar bills trying to save pennies, so to speak.

If the effort to reconfigure on the customers end would have been far more considerable, maybe THEN I'd worry about unborking the existing install. If it's what amounts to basically a new machine, like this one... run the dozer over it and forget it.
 
brandonkick said:
If it's what amounts to basically a new machine, like this one... run the dozer over it and forget it.
Click to expand...
Boy you are so right. The laptop had nothing on it worth saving. Unfortunately, I guess I did try and save the original install and I also waded into trying to upgrade to 1903. Both ended up being time-wasting decisions.

What that cost me was a good night's sleep. Because around 9 pm or so, I got that BSOD after a bunch of updating activity. I thought I was golden. I am so tired I cant really think how I got here, but I think I tried the 1903 after the BSOD. Its possible the BSOD was caused by my 1903 attempt however. I honestly cant remember.

But around 10pm, everything turned south. I could't choose a boot device in Bios. All of the prior restore points had disappeared as well. And one time I was actually in a reboot loop that didn't offer an obvious path of escape. Another time I had just a black screen and nothing else. I was terrified. But, I eventually was able to get it to boot somehow and I was saved.

I finally decided to bail on the 1903, since it wasn't taking, and go back to 1809, but I was having the hardest time running the setup since I couldn't boot into it via USB since Bios didn't have that option. Why did that disappear as an option in Bios?

I still don't recall exactly how I was able to run the 1809 executable. But I was able to do it and I began installing around 2am I think. Of course, loading that and all the updates that followed was another couple hours.

At the end of the day, I now have a great install of 1809(I hope) that has been fully updated. Updated Bios. I may not have slept, but at least the original problem(nothing would 'click' or respond to the mouse) has been fixed. As usual this has been a great learning lesson to not be repeated in the future.

There is a nap in my future.
 
Sky-Knight said:
I'm with Nline, 1903 exists only in my test benches right now, and will remain so until the end of Summer. 1809 is supported until May of next year, that's what I'm using. Heck, I'm still pushing 1809 out to all the stations still on 1803. I try to keep my business clients six months behind, someone else can be a beta tester.
Click to expand...

I live on the edge! Just fresh loaded my home pc from Windows 7 to 1903 last weekend!
 
@mikeroq, I'll have all my gear on 1903 sometime in the next week or two, just depends on when I get time to do it. My junk gets updated pretty quickly, my clients however are a different story.
 
RetiredGuy1000 said:
What's up Porthos? Thanks for that. I was afraid that wouldn't work and I would be frozen out once more, not able to get to System Restore. so I opted to do a System Restore. Will upgrade that to 1903. Hopefully that does it. He only has to reinstall that offending program as well as Office. But at least we wont have to do a reinstall of the os. Hopefully.
Click to expand...

ALWAYS do a full system backup before changing anything. Yeah, it's tempting to just dive in and fix whatever the problem is, but without a backup you're exposed to losing the customer's data and/or spending a lot of time fixing a repair that did not work to get back to where you started.

If I'm working on a desktop, I pull the hard drive and put it in a SATA docking station on my bench machine running Linux Mint and use ddrescue to image the entire disk. For an All-In-One or a laptop that you have to totally disassemble to get to the hard drive, I boot from a Linux Mint USB drive and run ddrescue from there. I like using ddrescue as it will find bad sectors (it copies every sector on the drive, not just the ones in use). However, the backup does take longer and also takes up more storage space.

Other folks on this forum use other backup tools, but the idea is to have a backup just in case things go sideways.

Just my $.02

Harry Z
 
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