I was so pleased with myself once I had gotten my Cosmos II Big Beastie all set up with Win 10 and all of my most used programs. It was a long time coming, what with mobo issues and the like, and it was fantastic to sit here in front of the 35" ultra wide screen connected to it....UNTIL MS decided to sneak in an update around 3.00 AM and borked quite a bit of stuff.
I know it was around 3.00AM cos I walked past the machine to go to the toilet at 3.06 AM and noticed it was on and downloading/installing updates. Anyway, I went back to bed not thinking much more of it... until I couldn't connect to the internet at around 7.00 AM. Yup, the update borked my wi-fi adapter, along with my sound card and related software. Several of my programs just didn't work anymore.... and worse still, some were gone. That's right, GONE.
My Wise Care 360 was gone; my Everything search program was gone; my RightClick Enhance was gone; as was my Winstep Xtreme and some of my ObjectDesktop apps, such as Start 10; WB and Iconpackager. I've been able to reinstall all of them, but that's not the point. Like what fechen right has MS to mess with my PC and the programs I want to install?
Some of the borked programs were uninstalled and reinstalled after a clean up with Wise Care 360 and most worked okay, but some didn't and I'm totally pissed. A system restore to before the update didn't work... it failed twice, so I can't resolve the issues that way. Worse still, my previously activated version of Windows was de-activated and I can't get my product key to work to activate it.
I have the option of doing a system reset, but I'm not too confident it will resolve all the issues. Then there's the option of doing a clean install to completely remove any crap left behind. Sadly, that would mean having to reload all my programs again becauses I didn't quite get around to installing Acronis to do a complete backup.
My main concern, however, is what if I can't reactivate Windows with my current [and previously valid] product key because MS has somehow deemed it invalid it.? I've spent quite a few hours trying to resolve the everything, and I mostly have, but I can't find a way to call MS like we used to be able to with licensing issues. I need to speak with somebody at MS to find out what is going on with my copy of Windows and product key.
Anyhow, if anyone has any ideas as to how best to proceed, please let me know. I can still run the OS without activation but I'd rather have things all shipshape and proper like.
TIA, Mark.