Comment by yndoendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yndoendo | Hacker News Reader

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Recently had a Windows update break my work computer. Everything seemed fine until trying to run a Windows Service in Virtual Box with the HOST OS being Windows 10 IoT in RTOS mode. The attempt to start the service create an infinite loop. Uninstalling nor re-installing the Windows updates fixed the issue. Took a month to convince IT to re-install Windows from fresh to fix the issue.

The second most recent was when Windows Store local repository become broken. Any attempt at resolving the issue failed using Windows provided tools. Yet again had to reinstall the OS and all applications.

This is the big reason why I prefer Linux over Windows any day of the week. Windows fix always seems to be the same, re-install OS and applications. Never had a problematic Linux installation that couldn't be resolved with a live CD / USB. Boot into live USB, mount encrypted partitions, chroot into environment, fix problematic package(s) or re-edit configuration files, reboot. No need to reinstall the OS and all applications.

Linux packaging system(s) are heaven compared to the Windows update hell-scale. Ever have to find a way to update the Root Certificates in order to install .NET Framework 4.7.2 offline on Windows 7 Embedded SP1 that is air gaped and has not had an update since the computers were shipped? Not fun.

>The second most recent was when Windows Store local repository become broken. Any attempt at resolving the issue failed using Windows provided tools. Yet again had to reinstall the OS and all applications.

oh man, I had my Windows install get into a weird state where trying to open 'Updates & Security' would just crash the Settings app altogether. Eventually I submitted a feedback hub report for it with a dump and tttrace (though that was a journey in and of itself) and in the meanwhile I actually managed to get updates installed via the PSWindowsUpdate powershell module. Alas, that still didn't fix the crashing Settings app. I had a friend at MS promote my feedback hub item to a bug who relayed the reason being that my copy of MusUpdatehandlers.dll was corrupt somehow. Ok, I guess I can try using sfc and dism to hopefully repair that. A couple rounds of that and all I learnt was I actually had a few more update related DLLs that were also corrupted. The real kicker being the copy in the store was also corrupted??

  2022-05-25 16:40:41, Info                  CSI    00000226 [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file \??\C:\WINDOWS\System32\\updatepolicy.dll; source file in store is also corrupted

Anyways, I was too stubborn to just reinstall and got it fixed by grabbing an install.wim from an ISO that matched my install and telling dism to use that. The really dumb thing was i first tried to do the repair in offline mode pointing it at the install.wim for sources but turns out that's just not supported. Instead you get some opaque failure message and it only mentions the fact that wasn't supported in a single line buried in the huge log file.

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