Posting this for the record since other people may be doing a Google search on what the blazes happened to the computer (or what may happen later).
1. I have an Asus motherboard.
2. Patch Tuesday was just a few days back.
I came home early on the Thursday after patch Tuesday and turned my computer. Instead of the usual start up with the BIOS information, I was greeted with this odd little statement in white letters on a black screen: "The system found unauthorized changes on the firmware, operating system or UEFI drivers." This was followed by an instruction to hit N to go to the next boot drive or hit ENTER to get into the BIOS settings.
Never having seen anything like this before in all the years I've been building and playing on PC's, my next thought was grabbing the Asus instruction manual and calling their support number. The instruction was "Hit F5 and restore your MB defaults." Tried it. No joy, same warning kept coming up. "Must be something corrupt in the OS". It's on a 1 TB SSD drive so not sure how that happened unless I managed to snag a bug from a website somewhere.
Moving right along, grabbed all the installation disks and with slapped the boot disk for Win7 in there. Selected repair. Tried going back one, two, and eventually three restore points, no joy. At the command prompt, I can see everything is still on drive C but it just will not start, not even in Safe Mode (since it would not get past that initial warning).
Unable to get on-line to do a Google search for a solution, I had no other choice but to use the nuclear option, and starting at 2:45 PM, wiped out the partitions on drive C and started reinstalling Win7.
That was not the hard part; I've done this fire-drill before. Everything is laid out in steps with a standard procedure (OS, MB drivers, keyboard drives, video card drivers, printer drivers in that order), followed by installation of the anti-virus program.
The hard part was normally the next step in the process: getting Windows updates. Normally I turn it off when I first get on line. Both Windows and the anti-virus program slow each other down trying to get their stuff at the same time. Since the AV takes less time, I let that update first. The real glitch happened when I tried getting the updates for Windows. After the AV is updated and the computer restarts, I check for updates which normally takes just a minute or so to do.
Not this time. The program that checks for updates (and the process that it runs) was hammering first 2, then 3 of my CPU cores, running up 6 gigs of RAM. And after 30 minutes, nothing coming down to download and install.
Fine, I thought, something's going on with MS servers. Continued with installing MS Office, etc. Eventually, after about two hours, I checked the ball and for the shut down button, it had the "install updates and shut down" option. So I used it. 190 updates. Shut down took about 45 minutes. That's when the odd thing happened. I turned the PC back on, getting the expected "Windows is configuring updates". 190 of them. I figured it'll take a while. After about 50 minutes I get "Failed to configure updates, reverting to previous configuration". Eventually, about 20 minutes later I finally get the log-in screen, and again, the checking process is hammering 3 cores.
It tried doing this two more times, same failure. At this point I figured I might have done something wrong, so Friday night after I was done working with some things, did another last-minute backup and started the install process again around 10:15 PM. Finished around 6 AM with the same problem installing updates. THIS time, however, I checked the installation logs. It WAS installing some of the updates but it looked like the OS had bit off more than it could chew. Being able to get back on line I was able to find out (1) what happened initially and (2) what was up with the updates failing to install.
1. KB3133977 seems to have been the problem. I have Secureboot on my MB, and apparently it reacted in a rather negative fashion with whatever that updated brought with it. Had the Asus rep known about this he could have given the solution of going to the BIOS, boot section, locate Secureboot, disable it and select "other OS". Had I been told to do this, the computer would have started right up without a problem.
2. Windows update issue: Unrelated to (1) above but something everyone having to reinstall Windows 7.x or 8.x might want to know the answer to. They're old. No service pack since #1 was created and MS has stated there will be no Service Pack 2 for either of them since they're trying to coax everyone to go to Windows 10 (not official but we all know what they want, right?). That means that anyone installing Win 7/8 will end up with a huge number of updates to deal with.
Best solution:
a) During installation make sure updates are OFF (you don't want interruptions during installation of drivers, etc. Once you're ready for them, go to Control Panel, System and Security, select Windows Updates, select Change Settings. Select "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download or install them".
b) Let Windows check on things for you. It'll take about 40-50 minutes (there'll be a lot of
them).
c) Once it finds a bunch, it'll let you know "Windows updates are available" in the usual bubble in the service tray.
d) Here's the trick: go to the update panel and check to see what updates are available for you. There's a checkbox that's empty at the top of that list. Check it, then UNCHECK it. It'll untick ALL the boxes.
e) Pick 30 or 40 (starting from the top of that list), click OK, then install updates. It'll pick just that first 30 or 40, install them, then advise you to restart. They'll install perfectly.
Return to (d) above and repeat until done. Yes, it's a pain but I'm leaving this experience posted for anyone else trying desperately to find a way to make it work.
BTW, this was one of those experiences that made me so glad I back everything up to a 1 TB external drive every night. He who laughs last did a backup.
1. I have an Asus motherboard.
2. Patch Tuesday was just a few days back.
I came home early on the Thursday after patch Tuesday and turned my computer. Instead of the usual start up with the BIOS information, I was greeted with this odd little statement in white letters on a black screen: "The system found unauthorized changes on the firmware, operating system or UEFI drivers." This was followed by an instruction to hit N to go to the next boot drive or hit ENTER to get into the BIOS settings.
Never having seen anything like this before in all the years I've been building and playing on PC's, my next thought was grabbing the Asus instruction manual and calling their support number. The instruction was "Hit F5 and restore your MB defaults." Tried it. No joy, same warning kept coming up. "Must be something corrupt in the OS". It's on a 1 TB SSD drive so not sure how that happened unless I managed to snag a bug from a website somewhere.
Moving right along, grabbed all the installation disks and with slapped the boot disk for Win7 in there. Selected repair. Tried going back one, two, and eventually three restore points, no joy. At the command prompt, I can see everything is still on drive C but it just will not start, not even in Safe Mode (since it would not get past that initial warning).
Unable to get on-line to do a Google search for a solution, I had no other choice but to use the nuclear option, and starting at 2:45 PM, wiped out the partitions on drive C and started reinstalling Win7.
That was not the hard part; I've done this fire-drill before. Everything is laid out in steps with a standard procedure (OS, MB drivers, keyboard drives, video card drivers, printer drivers in that order), followed by installation of the anti-virus program.
The hard part was normally the next step in the process: getting Windows updates. Normally I turn it off when I first get on line. Both Windows and the anti-virus program slow each other down trying to get their stuff at the same time. Since the AV takes less time, I let that update first. The real glitch happened when I tried getting the updates for Windows. After the AV is updated and the computer restarts, I check for updates which normally takes just a minute or so to do.
Not this time. The program that checks for updates (and the process that it runs) was hammering first 2, then 3 of my CPU cores, running up 6 gigs of RAM. And after 30 minutes, nothing coming down to download and install.
Fine, I thought, something's going on with MS servers. Continued with installing MS Office, etc. Eventually, after about two hours, I checked the ball and for the shut down button, it had the "install updates and shut down" option. So I used it. 190 updates. Shut down took about 45 minutes. That's when the odd thing happened. I turned the PC back on, getting the expected "Windows is configuring updates". 190 of them. I figured it'll take a while. After about 50 minutes I get "Failed to configure updates, reverting to previous configuration". Eventually, about 20 minutes later I finally get the log-in screen, and again, the checking process is hammering 3 cores.
It tried doing this two more times, same failure. At this point I figured I might have done something wrong, so Friday night after I was done working with some things, did another last-minute backup and started the install process again around 10:15 PM. Finished around 6 AM with the same problem installing updates. THIS time, however, I checked the installation logs. It WAS installing some of the updates but it looked like the OS had bit off more than it could chew. Being able to get back on line I was able to find out (1) what happened initially and (2) what was up with the updates failing to install.
1. KB3133977 seems to have been the problem. I have Secureboot on my MB, and apparently it reacted in a rather negative fashion with whatever that updated brought with it. Had the Asus rep known about this he could have given the solution of going to the BIOS, boot section, locate Secureboot, disable it and select "other OS". Had I been told to do this, the computer would have started right up without a problem.
2. Windows update issue: Unrelated to (1) above but something everyone having to reinstall Windows 7.x or 8.x might want to know the answer to. They're old. No service pack since #1 was created and MS has stated there will be no Service Pack 2 for either of them since they're trying to coax everyone to go to Windows 10 (not official but we all know what they want, right?). That means that anyone installing Win 7/8 will end up with a huge number of updates to deal with.
Best solution:
a) During installation make sure updates are OFF (you don't want interruptions during installation of drivers, etc. Once you're ready for them, go to Control Panel, System and Security, select Windows Updates, select Change Settings. Select "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download or install them".
b) Let Windows check on things for you. It'll take about 40-50 minutes (there'll be a lot of
them).
c) Once it finds a bunch, it'll let you know "Windows updates are available" in the usual bubble in the service tray.
d) Here's the trick: go to the update panel and check to see what updates are available for you. There's a checkbox that's empty at the top of that list. Check it, then UNCHECK it. It'll untick ALL the boxes.
e) Pick 30 or 40 (starting from the top of that list), click OK, then install updates. It'll pick just that first 30 or 40, install them, then advise you to restart. They'll install perfectly.
Return to (d) above and repeat until done. Yes, it's a pain but I'm leaving this experience posted for anyone else trying desperately to find a way to make it work.
BTW, this was one of those experiences that made me so glad I back everything up to a 1 TB external drive every night. He who laughs last did a backup.
