Repair Tower's Win10 VM.
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Hello
One of my [Linux] Tower's Win10 VMs has been buggered since 12/2/17 wrt Windows Update [it simply refuses to connect & update, despite my pc generally & the VM specifically having otherwise working internet connectivity]:
This kind of crap is just the kind of thing that drove me, in 2013 [after using Windoze since 1990], to learn about Linux & eventually fully migrate from Windoze to Linux. I've not looked back. I really only keep Win10 on my machines [albeit only in VMs] for two reasons, i think:
- My stubbornness [i sweated blood (possible hyperbole) getting my original Win7 Pro to run in the VM, be Activated, then converted free to Win10, so it feels kinda wrong to just throw it away now].
- Capability to access some of my [now pretty old] Outlook 2010 data if ever a future need arose.
However, every time i try to motivate myself to troubleshoot this, the sky darkens, ominous peals of thunder manifest, columns of foul smoke belch up over Mordor, Orcs & Wargs begin marching, & the evil red Eye of Sauron sweeps the landscape. I just loathe Windoze sooooo much that summoning up sufficient enthusiasm for this is challenging.
I speculated that one, other or both of those KBs might have caused this problem, so i thought as a first step i'd uninstall them & see if WU then behaved again. However all attempts to uninstall those two KBs [with Control Panel] fail . Also, "wushowhide.diagcab" was useless [didn't find any problems]. DDG'ing the symptoms found many other complainants but no actual solutions. I suppose one option now might be the nuclear one... run Win10's so-called "Recovery" process [which feels like just starting over again, rather than actually finding & fixing the root-cause].
Then i thought i might post here to see what the wise community might have to say about this silliness. Please?
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Tower & Lappy = Maui 17.03 x64 Plasma 5.9.3.
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I wish I had an answer, but diagnosing software problems remotely is too challenging - not to mention the fact that I don't recall ever stumbling upon such issues (despite having to deal with a fair amount of them in my career). That being said, you can consider the following as more of an opinion rather than an actual advice.
First of all, what's the reason you're so eager to install the updates? I know that in a long-term discarding updates might cause potential issues, but for now, I would just ignore this problem. Well, perhaps it's not too common, but sometimes, some things magically start to work after a while.
In my experience, Windows Updates were the most common causes of system issues. Windows 10 updates surprisingly didn't break anything for me so far, but in Windows 8 it was a real nightmare. I totally sympathize with the guy in the middle:
(Even though I probably can't help you, I hoped that I could at least cheer you up with a funny picture).If I would have to use more than one OS on one machine for a longer period of time I would probably go for a dual boot rather than using a Virtual Machine. VM can always potentially cause more troubles. But that's just my opinion.
Oh, and about the Windows Troubleshooter. This image kind of express how I feel about it...
In my Experience, the troubleshooter was the most useless Windows feature. It used to work in some cases in Windows XP, but since Windows 7 I don't remember it ever helping me to solve any of my troubles...
So, unless anyone else comes up with a better idea or you somehow manage to get this sorted out on your own, the system "refresh" might be your last resort.
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@Steffie - I think I may have a valid link for an in-place upgrade. PM me?
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@pafflick -- No worries, thanks all the same.
"what's the reason you're so eager to install the updates? " --> well yes, this is a very fair question indeed, & i have been asking myself this too. It did occur to me that another viable option might be to simply disconnect the VM's internet connection, & just use it [given i actually only fire it up anyway ~every 7th circuit of Halley's Comet] in purely offline mode. Of course that would be unviable if it were my actual real OS, but it's not. However i remind you of my self-described stubbornness trait... broken things just immensely irritate me, & usually generate a corresponding drive to investigate & repair. Still, given the thing here is Win10, as i also said before, my enthusiasm-coefficient for this dross is very low...
BTW [this comment will be incomprehensible to you if not a fan of Douglas Adams' HHGTTG] your cartoon's middle character's thought was almost the same as the spontaneously generated bowl of petunias as it free-fell to earth
Dual-boot. Uh, no, that was in my past. Back in 2013 & still a fulltime Win7 user, but becoming interested in possible escape to the Linux multiverse, i first experimented with some Linux distros in VMs i created in Win7. Realising i kinda loved it, i next converted my Lappy [no big fat juicy Tower as well, back then] to dual-boot Win7 + Mint KDE. It transpired that i was so rapt with Mint that i spent most of my Lappy-time booted into Mint, & as time went by ever-decreasing amounts of time back in Win7 [& hated it each time i had to use it, + the logistics of having to boot back & forth, initially a source of geeky pleasure, rapidly became onerous & oppressive]. This culminated in a full reformat to single-boot Linux, with Windoze [initially still 7, but later the free-downgrade to 10] in a VB VM. I replicated the arrangement when i later got my Tower, which has a sufficiently huge secondary drive to give me ample space for VMs for XP, 10 [x2], & a gazillion various Linux distros. Dual-boot was a fun & educational interim stage for me, but for my needs & sensibilities at least, using any subsidiary OS i need/want now in a VM is a lovely arrangement.
Thanks once again.
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@Ayespy -- Done. Waiting for your availability. Thanks.
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Happier status news. I discovered from a link in the page whose link you PM'd me [Ayespy, thanks], that when viewed from within my Win10 VM [coz in my native Linux, MS redirects to an alternative page without this important info], this happens:
...& the result of clicking that button:
[as you can see, it's still in progress in my 2nd Win10 VM, although it successfully finished a couple of hours ago in my primary Win10 VM]. The problem i posted about in creating this thread afflicted only my primary Win10 VM, not the other, & consequently the problem is now solved... via this major OS upgrade of whose existence i did not previously know [given i live in Linux, i stopped following Windoze news a long time ago, & only launch these VMs rarely].
So now i've eliminated the significant problem, AND now have the very latest & finest in OS spyware that MS & NSA can provide; "Windows 10 Creators Update", = Version 1703, OS Build 15063.13. .
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Tower & Lappy = Maui Linux 17.03 x64 Plasma 5.9.3.
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