Updating hangs Windows 10

Factual Questions
1

Yesterday evening I got the message, Restart needed for updates (or however it’s phrased), and there was a restart button, so I hit it. The updates did their thing (light blue screen) and then rebooted. When the screen came back on, it was black, with the “working” icon (little circle of dots in motion-- does Microsoft have a name for that?). Well, that ran for an hour or so, and I got on my kindle and read that I should let it run for at least three hours before I gave up. So I went to bed.

Naturally, when I got up this morning and and looked, the little circle was still running-- no words on the screen, just black with the circle-of-dots.

I used the power button to shut off the computer and did a little more research on my kindle. Then after a few minutes, I simultaneously pushed ctrl-alt-delete AND the power button. The DELL logo came up, then the black screen, which momentarily showed the blue Windows logo, and then the words “restoring your previous version of Windows,” and the circle-of-dots. Eventually the desktop was back, and then in the notifications area, “We could not finish installing updates,” to which I replied, “No fucking joke.”

This happened at least once before that I can remember, and I never did attempt to locate and install those updates, unless they were automatically included in the next sweep. I have Windows 10Pro, 64 bit, Version 1511, Build 10586.753 on a Dell PCM6700 laptop, which I’ve had for about four years and love like a puppy.

Any advice/suggestions for the next time this happens?

(Should this be in IMHO? Move, if necessary.)

2

That was happening to me for the last month or so. The first few times, I forced a reboot by shutting the computer down after the spinning dots appeared for a long while. After doing this two or three times in a row, the system eventually started normally, and the update history said the new patch had been applied. A couple of weeks ago, it did it again, and this time it restored the previous version.

So after that, I decided to start from scratch. I ordered a new SSD, did a clean install of Window and reinstalled my programs.

3

EEK! I hope I can avoid that…

Does Microsoft have any [del]explanations[/del] excuses for this? It seems to be a fairly common experience.

4

It’s been happening to me. There are hundreds of complaints like this online and every so-called expert seems to have a different answer. None of the ones I tried worked for me.

I found that the easiest way to handle it is to use the power button to do a hard shut down and then restart. It may take twice to get its act together but it does stop.

5

Actually, it wasn’t that bad. When I’ve done clean installs of previous Windows versions, the first thing I’ve had to do is to add the various drivers (video card, sound card, Intel chipset, etc.). The first sign was always that the bare Windows installation showed only 640x480 resolution and Device Manager had exclamation marks next to various components (indicating a missing driver).

But Windows 10 seemed to find all of the drivers it needed on its own. I just had to reinstall Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Media Player Classic, Quicken, my antivirus software and a few other programs I prefer.