How Linux saved my computer from Windows Update
Summary: If it wasn't for Linux, a Windows Update crash would have forced me to format my drive and reinstall everything.On Friday I got home from work, powered up my HP Pavilion DV6 6055ea laptop and watched as it promptly shut down to churn through Windows Update.
If it wasn't for Linux, a Windows Update crash would have forced me to format my drive and reinstall everything.
On Friday I got home from work, powered up my HP Pavilion DV6 6055ea laptop and watched as it promptly shut down to churn through Windows Update. It got 30 percent of the way through then the blue screen of death (BSOD) appeared.
Credit: Jack Clark
According to the error message something had gone terribly wrong with igdpmd32.sys. As far as I can tell the file is an Intel graphics driver. I tried to get into VGA safemode, but the BSOD happened again. I then fiddled with the bios, but to no avail.
The SSD that stores the data on the laptop used to be in a Samsung rig, so I grabbed a Samsung recovery disc. None of the bundled Windows recovery options worked and, in fact, some of them crashed as well, creating a thicket of conflicting messages which meant all the usual tools — sfc scannow, Windows StartupRepair and so on — failed to work.
At a loss I thought I'd go into command prompt which came with the recovery disc and have a poke about. Upon firing it up, I was met with this lovely sight.
Credit: Jack Clark
Yes, Samsung's recovery CD's command prompt defaults to South Korean when things get tricky.
After a couple of further hours of poking around in various directories in command prompt and using regedit to try and remotely shut down the .sys file, I was at a loss. igdpmd32.sys was nowhere to be found in the registry apart from being pointed to from an obscure PNPLockdown file. Worse, though I could view it in all its obstinate, irritating glory via DIR (Drivers) in command line, I couldn't delete it from there.
At this point I took to twitter and sbisson suggested I try using Linux to tunnel through to the problematic driver and delete it. I used an old computer to burn a copy of Ubuntu 11.04, then stuck it in the HP Pavilion, booted onto the OS from the CD and renamed the troublesome driver to igdpmd32.sys.old.
Just like that, my computer was back in action. I downloaded replacement drivers from HP's support website, cracked my knuckles and got back to work. Without the Linux CD, I'd have been stuffed.
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Talkback
Interestingly, the Windows 7 based WinPE Recovery Disc of HDM2011(also provided) doesn't have the browse facility across OS's - which backs up Jack Clark's prognosis.
Also has many unusual uses - I used this recently to 'get under Windows 7' and inject an XDDM Intel 82855GM Graphics (WinXP drivers) into Windows 7, bypassing Windows 7 inbuilt security which kept throwing the non-certified Windows XP Drivers out of the pram, constantly replacing with the older WinXP XDDM Driver with the standard Vesa VGA Driver.
Intel decided not to produce drivers for Win7 for these older Centrino systems, but this has proved a good workaround. This resulted in a working Windows 7 System, in which Standard Non Aero Graphics/DVD Playback worked, at full resolution/accelerated playback.
Personally would never purchase a system with only Intel Graphics again, as soon as they are put out to pasture ie. not in production- Intel has a habit of pulling driver development.
I find this strange though, I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit on the same hardware upgraded from Windows Vista Ultimate 64 Bit SP2 upgraded two years ago. I go through the same Windows Updates as the average Windows 7 user and I have never had any of these problems.
I am beginning to think Linux users just give off bad energy and Windows doesn't like it.
> I am beginning to think Linux users just give off bad energy and Windows doesn't like it.
Heh, I was wondering when the "It's not Windows' fault!" song and dance would begin... ;-)
Like it or not, Windows life support is being held up by Linux based Paramedics, so to speak. Without Linux, and Linux based support tools, both commercial and free - I'm not sure Windows, especially Windows XP would have survived this long in the workplace.
The idea of having to reinstall Windows every time I'd been presented with a problem just doesn't bear thinking about. Thankfully I never have to because prevention/image backups are a necessary evil if you want to run Windows, but that can be said for any OS, but its the Windows images that get used the most.
In fairness, the whole Windows Update shenanigans is pretty much a non-story because it can be managed/and is managed with such Linux based support tools.
The key is being able to restore the machine to a previous state quickly when an issue does occur.
Whenever attempting any changes, that should be foremost in your mind. Backup,Backup,Backup.
The thing is, I don't get these problems, I have 3 systems running Windows 7, I use them very hard too, on the go, hibernate, photo editing, email, drafting, networking, writing and I have a large library files and I have never had any problems with Windows.
One of the things I do with Windows Update is set it to download updates and let me choose when to install them. I also prefer to install them disconnected from the Internet, especially with its a lot of updates such as on a patch Tuesday, it works really great and guarantees the updates installed successfully.
To quote Jack Clark:'None of the bundled Windows recovery options worked and, in fact, some of them crashed as well, creating a thicket of conflicting messages which meant all the usual tools — sfc scannow, Windows StartupRepair and so on — failed to work.'
Its worth reading the article before declaring how wonderful the MS Inbuilt Recovery Tools are. Plus, your Recovery Solution for Windows XP Users is....
Personally, I don't have the time to spend time running 'possible' solutions using the MS Startup Repair Options, I need a concrete solution that can be implemented fast. Non of the MS Repair methods are either fast or concrete. Remember - MS System Restore is targeted by viruses to remove System Restore points, users should not put their complete faith in it.
A system image of the disk 'which gets underneath Windows' is the fastest method, full proof method to recover a system. I'll stick to my Linux based Recovery Tools, quick - tried and tested and works every time.
I suppose its a hard fact to swallow for MS that quickest, best full-proof solution to recover a dud MS System is a Linux based Recovery tool.
I highly recommend using GNU/Linux or a more stable operating system for everyday work. If you need a running Windows machine, I recommend running it in VirtualBox, where you can take snapshots and roll them back in minutes, saving a lot of grief if you run into a Windows problem. VirtualBox is very efficient and runs virtual machines on a Linux host better than VMWare Workstation on a Windows 7 host, in my own tests.
I too would recommend this - as in the same way as Linux, it allows you to take snapshots 'which get underneath Windows', and revert back if problems occur. You do need plenty of disk space though. I'd actually say this is probably the best method of running Windows nowadays, especially if your testing things, prototyping things - but was trying to keep within the realms of the article, which is repairing Windows using Linux.
Not everyone can be bothered to setup Windows 'virtually', though there are plenty of tools to make the process easy including Paragon HDM 2011, which will create a virtual image of your Windows Installation for you, to use in VMWare and I presume Virtualbox (being VMWare compatible)
Actually in this instance, the WinPE Version of Paragon HDM 2011 has the virtualisation tools.
The Linux Based Paragon HDM 2011 doesn't, but allows you to boot directly from the cd into your virtualisation environment, so in effect you just use the standard tools to restore/backup from the virtual image of the whole harddisk you have created in VMWare. (Its a bit difficult to explain unless you've done it)
> Heh, I was wondering when the "It's not Windows' fault!" song and dance would begin... ;-)
Don't you find it the least bit curious that well over a billion people manage to use Windows Update without noticeable problems but a tiny handful of self-proclaimed Microsoft haters manage to screw it up on a regular basis? Don't you also find it somewhat curious that this tiny handful also don't appear to have much of a clue about what they're doing?
Note, I'm not saying there are never any problems with Windows Update, but statistically, it is extremely successful.
Note also that I'm not saying Jack Clark is a Microsoft hater, but he moved an SSD from a Samsung to an HP, and this is not a normal usage pattern for Windows users. Sure, this ought to work, but modern PCs are integrated, tested systems, and you can't simply assume that you can take that a part that works in one PC and stick it in another. You shouldn't do it unless you know what you are doing, and you're willing to take responsibility for your own actions.
In passing, this really has very little to do with Microsoft, which doesn't even know what PC manufacturers ship with their Windows PCs, or how they customise them.
Finally, I don't see anything wrong with using a Linux CD to solve Windows problems: I've done it myself, and I've been publicly recommending it for, I guess, at least a decade. For those of us who live in the real world, it's all about doing what works. All this juvenile pseudo-religious fanboyism is just a waste of electrons.
As JackSchofield said, I should reiterate that as the main drive had moved from one hardware configuration into another the crash probably came about as a consequence of conflicting graphics drivers for different Intel chips. It's an obscure case. However, the fact that all the Windows recovery tools proceeded to fail did not help matters.
Or, is it just that it works, but could use some improvement? If I were strictly a Windows user, and never had any exposure to anything else, I would probably be comfortable with Windows Update and all of its reboots. But, as a GNU/Linux user, I realize that GNU/Linux does the same thing with zero or one reboots, and updates the entire system including all software installed. That puts Windows Update in a completely different light.
> That puts Windows Update in a completely different light.
Not really. Windows Update is data driven, and Microsoft will know how many problems are avoided by forcing reboots. If you're dealing with more than 500 million updates, even a small improvement can save tens of thousands of people from having problems. Almost all of those people are very far from being expert enough to run Linux which, as posts on here show, throws up all kinds of obscure problems.
Windows Update operates at a scale that means comparisons with Linux are utterly meaningless, if not misleading.
> Don't you find it the least bit curious that well over a billion people manage to use
> Windows Update without noticeable problems
The operative word there is "noticeable". How do you know they aren't having problems? It's possible that they're simply accepting their problems as "the status quo", having never experienced anything any better. Is everyone who goes to PC-World's "Tech Guys" suddenly a MS-hater, or something? And why are there so many people offering "Fix your PC" services if only MS-haters experience failures?
Can't you even consider the possibility that it's just the people with experience beyond MS who are more likely to blog about when things go wrong?
Besides, I'm not sure that you can justify "over a billion". Hasn't it also been claimed that some of the problems with Windows are caused by many people *not* installing updates ;-)?
> but a tiny handful of self-proclaimed Microsoft haters manage to screw it up on a
> regular basis?
Sometimes, the person saying "But the King hasn't got anything on!" is actually correct. And the person saying "Anyone who disagrees with me must be stupid and incompetent!" is secretly a swindler.
Again, this is dodging the point of simply looking at the efficiency of how each operating system handles its updates. Or put it in a different perspective, what if we are talking about servers where keeping downtime to a minimum is critical. One one hand you have Windows servers, where the server itself needs a reboot typically once per month. On the other hand you have GNU/Linux servers where the server itself needs a reboot typically of zero reboots per month, and can achieve runtimes of hundreds of days. We could be talking about 5 updates or 500, the point is the efficiency of applying them to the operating system (and/or any additional software installed on the system).
"Almost all of those people are very far from being expert enough to run Linux which, as posts on here show, throws up all kinds of obscure problems."
An expert to run Linux? An age-old myth again that still seems to surface frequently. Any user of Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, or other mainstream GNU/Linux distributions knows that installing updates is as easy as clicking a mouse. I do agree that installing updates for Windows and Linux is just as easy either way... except as we've pointed out, one is more efficient than the other.