I was on MT early yesterday evening and then went to cook our dinner. I came back to find the computer restarting after Microsoft had forced the most recent 1909 updates on this computer. My post earlier in this thread show that I had it set so as to update 7 days after release, yesterday was the day the updates which were put on my computer were released. I know someone who had this happen to them last month and have read about similar instances of forced updates.
The updates, security and .NET ones, had failed. My computer would not boot and none of my back up solutions or rescue discs would work. The computer was stuck in a continuous loop of trying to implement 'automatic repairs' and failing to do so, then offering me various options to start in safe mode, boot from USB, USB drive, USB drives and even floppy etc. None of those options worked, file explorer was not working so I could not navigate to any internal or external locations. I could not navigate to an external hard drive with Macrium Reflect backups on. Putting a disc in the drive was pointless for the same reason. Reset would not work either.
I resolved the situation by installing a new Win 10 version on the C drive, then installing Macrium Reflect on the computer and running a restore operation to the way the computer had been set up earlier yesterday, pre-disaster from a Reflect backup made then. Everything works just as it did earlier yesterday. I took that route to restore things because I did not want to have to re-install all of the software that would be messed about by the C drive having a new Win 10 install, just having to make all of the about:config changes that I like and the extension settings would have meant it would take me ages to get it back to how I like Firefox. I work full time so that would have had to eat into time set aside for all the other things I need to do.
I install most of my software onto a seperate partition to the OS, its an old habit that I'm so glad that I continue as otherwise I'd still be re-installing much of the software if it had been on the C drive, or I'd not have had such an easy option as to re-install the OS.
Interestingly the OS updated to 2004 when I searched for updates, this is on a computer that when I tried over the weekend to see if it would update to 2004 I was told that the computer is not ready for thee 2004 release, so that must be due to some settings on my computer. As I've said before I am not going to alter whatever those settings are. Microsoft can do the work required from their side, it is my PC!
Moral of the story - backup, backup, backup and pray there is a way to implement the backup if Microsoft screws around with your system! Possibly also not leave my computer turned on and online when I am away from it for more than a few minutes, its in our home, there are no aliens here.
At some point I'll start dual booting on this system with an as yet undecided flavour of Linux.
I have no idea what someone without some IT knowledge would have done in my situation last night, coughed up a fair bit to their local computer repair shop I guess. I wish Microsoft would at least release updates that are more fit for purpose than the ones they seem to be releasing this year!
Edit - typos!