03:30 this morning, I see a message advising me to update Windows 10 on my home desktop. One option is “Update and shutdown”.
“Sure, why not? I’m off to work anyway.”
17:30 this evening. I get home and turn on the computer. “Updating your PC, your PC will reboot multiple times, do not turn off your PC.”
You. Fricking. Sod.
Update an Android device, and if it takes 2 minutes then it’s having a slow day. Update Windows, and 20 to 30 minutes later, you’re still being told that “It may take some time” and that it’s “preparing to think about the possibility of maybe some day configuring your computer for update, 30% complete as it always is”. However I was finally able to boot.
I was then confronted by the most horrifying screen in all of Windows-dom. The pregnant pause, followed by the big, skinny and not-just-a-little-bit-creepy Arial… “Hi.”
At that point you know that this is not a minor update, and that the odds of your machine being utterly fracked are pretty damn good.
If Steven King wants to write a book where the monster / creature sends creepy shivers up your spine to a greater extent than any that he has written to date… that very screen will be the way that the creature introduces itself.
And so it was; the thing was stuffed, again. The notification centre would not open, again. Although I refuse to use those accursed tiles and use Classic Shell, any attempt to open the Windows 10 Start Menu generated an error that it was “broken” and with no option but to log off in the hope that it would self-repair on the next re-start. Which it did not.
The login that I use to produce videos on the TM1 Channel was similarly stuffed.
If this happens to you, try this. (I got to this through Classic Shell’s search function but you may not have that option. This should get you to the same place.)
- Type Windows + X to bring up the menu.
- Select Settings.
- In the Find A Setting text box, type the word Troubleshoot and Enter.
- You should see something like this. Run the Windows Update troubleshooter.
It will probably advise you that there is a problem with that useless steaming pile of crud Cortana, and one other Windows component.
Unusually for a Windows Update component, this one actually seemed to work well. After a reboot all was well.
If you do a search for “Start Menu Broken” and “Windows 10 1803” you should get results well into 6 figures.
Good luck!