Both my laptop and my desktop computers have finally run the gauntlet of last year’s major Windows 10 update to ver. 1909, without getting borked by the update! Why is this a miracle? Let me count the ways, or rather the times both computers have—all on their own—tried to do this, each time ending in disaster. Windows tech support, including Level Three (high) support, invested hours in trying to solve this with me, all ending in failure. This time it succeeded, but only because of other Windows users to the rescue.
What went wrong was that the update program each time created a new user profile—[username].000—and moved all of my files into it, text, music, photos, everything. That’s what it left me with, plus the nearly empty shell of the old profile [username]. What’s wrong with this (besides offending my sensibilities)? Everything! All my software is set up to look for files in a particular location. This changed the paths to all the files. Dropbox failed. Onedrive failed. iTunes failed, Word and Scrivener failed….
What brought about the miracle? Some user’s discovery, posted on a Microsoft support board, that if he uninstalled his Zune software and removed all traces of it before the update, everything worked the way it was supposed to. Please note: Zune software is a Microsoft product. I use it to support my Zune music player, which I still use, and love. Don’t you think Microsoft should have designed their update to take their own legacy software into account? Failing that, don’t you think they should have informed all support personnel of the workaround, especially since the information has been posted on a Microsoft support board since last summer? I kind of do.
It took me a while to find the time and determination, but I finally did the same thing: ran a full backup, uninstalled Zune, tried the update. And it worked! It worked! No more do I live under the Sword of Damocles of unplanned update/borks! (For now, anyway.) And I reinstalled Zune, and all is well.
In celebration, I present you with a picture of my 20-year-old lava lamp! It doesn’t exactly work right anymore, but it’s still trying.
