Hello, this is Jason with Dell Technologies, and today I'd like to show you what you can do when your server won't boot after a Windows Update.
So, the first thing that we need to do is download the Windows Install Media for whatever operating system you're running. In this case, it's "Windows Server 2019".
If you don't have the media, you could download it by searching for "Server 2019 Evaluation", and it'll take you to the Microsoft site where you could download the ISO.
Then you can create a bootable USB out of the ISO or mount it to the iDRAC as virtual media and boot to the virtual media on the iDRAC. Then you'll come to this screen right here when you boot.
And then we'll choose "Next" and repair your computer. It's also possible that if your server was in a boot loop after a few failed reboots, if the recovery options are enabled, it may bring you to this screen without booting to media. And you can go from there as well.
So, here we'll click on "Troubleshoot" and "Command Prompt". The first thing we need to do is find out where our Windows folder is in the recovery command prompt.
Most of us install our operating system on "C" but in the recovery environment, you can see it's not on "C". We have no Windows folder there.
So, let's look on "D," "Dir," and there's our Windows folder. So, we're going to be working with D Drive in this case. Your drive letter could be different.
So you just have to find that Windows folder to see where your Windows drive is. The first thing that we are going to do is run "dism /image:d:\" so that is where Windows is installed. And "/cleanup-image /revertpendingactions", and run that.
Mine completed successfully. and I didn't have any pending actions at the time, so it went through real quickly. But in your case, it could take a few minutes to revert any pending actions that Windows Updates may have applied.
Then once that's completed, you can just "X" out of this window and boot normally, and see if you're able to boot into Windows.
There are cases where the Windows Update completely applies, but then when you try to get to your login screen, it causes a reboot. So, the Windows Update applied, it's not pending.
And in those cases, we'll have to manually remove the update. So we'll come back to the same command prompt, and in this case, we'll run "dism". And we want to point to the image again, and "/get-packages".
This will show us all the Windows Update packages that have installed. The latest updates are usually toward the bottom. So, if you only have one update that installed, and you see that it was the latest one, then you'll know that's the one that you need to remove.
If you have three or four or more, then you could just try removing one at a time or you could remove a few at a time. Eventually, you'll be able to remove one that allows the Windows to boot.
So, here is the command that we want to run, "dism" and point to our image again, Instead of typing out a whole long name, you could just left-click and highlight it with your mouse.
Then let go, then right-click once, and then right-click again, and it'll paste that package name in there. In my case, none of my Windows Updates are broken so I'm not going to remove it, but you would click on that to remove the package.
Once the package is removed, you can click on this "X" and then click on "Continue" to boot to Windows, and hopefully, your Windows will boot for you normally. That is how you do it! I hope this helped you out.
And thank you for watching.
