Windows 8.1 update - Killed partition table

[StephenWagner7]

Wow, so kinda pissed off here.

I'm an I.T. guy (non-noob). Updated my Surface Pro no issues.

Went to update my workstation, after first restart, the system won't boot (stuck in bios). Ripped the drive out... It turns out the Windows 8.1 update actually killed the partition table on the drive (confirmed this hooking it up to another computer, then verifying the corrupt partition table on Linux).

Just wanted to give a heads up. This system was not modified at all (simply used it at my office for word, etc...) no apps installed other then office. No dual-boot, etc... Just a clean install of Windows 8.

Kinda choked, lost quite a bit of important stuff.

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

As a "non-noob" IT Guy you should probably have had a backup before updating.

As a proper "non-noob" IT guy, I ran a full system image backup before running the Windows 8.1 installer.

 

[StephenWagner7]

As a "non-noob" IT Guy you should probably have had a backup before updating.

As a proper "non-noob" IT guy, I ran a full system image backup before running the Windows 8.1 installer.

I should have used different words

All my stuff is stored on servers. Just had a bunch of personal pictures I synced from my old Windows Phone which I had yet to move to my servers

Just pictures... Wouldn't have even lost those, but recently got a new phone.

 

[hacer619]

Lol

 

[gsquared]

No offence but:

No backup = n00b
Keeping personal data on same partition as OS = n00b

 

[StephenWagner7]

Here's some interesting news...

Partition shows as "Raw" on other systems, and causes BIOS's to freeze on system start.

Unhooked the drive while BIOS posts, plugged sata cable in, booted off Windows 8.1 DVD. Went in to recovery, loaded up the command prompt...

Tried to re-write the MBR, tried to regenerate the Bootloader list, etch.. All failed, however using the command prompt I can browse the filesystem...

Attached a External USB drive, right now just robocopying all the pics from the drive to external drive. Happy camper!

 

[manzanotti]

Sounds similar to what's happened to my laptop, can't boot up, and booting off a Win 8 DVD selecting either Recover Windows or a fresh installation does nothing, the machine just sits there. Not the most fun evening I've ever had. I'm assuming that the drive can be re-formatted and a fresh installation done on that?

 

[StephenWagner7]

Sounds similar to what's happened to my laptop, can't boot up, and booting off a Win 8 DVD selecting either Recover Windows or a fresh installation does nothing, the machine just sits there. Not the most fun evening I've ever had. I'm assuming that the drive can be re-formatted and a fresh installation done on that?

You should be able too. If you want to recover anything, use the method I used above...

Of you don't want to, use dd on Linux to zero out the first 512 bytes or so of the disk and it should be readable (this will permanently remove access to the old data).

In my case, I can go to install and delete the partitions which I'm going to try after I finish copying my stuff off.

 

[Dragunov2]

I used an Windows 8.1 ISO, no problems here!

 

[Bob Grosh]

Sounds like nonsense to me.
A real IT guy would have done several upgrades from 8.0 to 8.1 prerelease several months ago.
A real IT guy would have tried it on drives set as basic with partitions and on drives set as dynamic with volumes
A real IT guy would have already done it with Dynamic volumes that were discontinuous, striped or spanning
A real IT guy would know that 8.1 might set the drive up for dynamic and that the volumes look just like partitions to Linux but don't work the same
A real IT guy would know that not all MS dynamic volumes would be readable by Linux
A real IT guy would know an 8.1 upgrade will always have a copy of the old system that can be recovered from once you convert it back to basic from dynamic
A real IT guy would have thoroughly read the materials on the MS site back when Dynamic was introduced with server 2008 and Vista
A real IT guy would never blow away perfectly good data, he would have just converted the disk back to basic
A real IT guy would have would have never gotten impatient during those long black screen episodes while booting, (sometimes 5 hours) during an upgrade, He would have understood it and expected it.
A real IT guy would have done ten systems yesterday, everything from a brand new acer Iconia to a 10 year old dog of a dual core pentium.

 

[StephenWagner7]

Sounds like nonsense to me.
A real IT guy would have done several upgrades from 8.0 to 8.1 prerelease several months ago.
A real IT guy would have tried it on drives set as basic with partitions and on drives set as dynamic with volumes
A real IT guy would have already done it with Dynamic volumes that were discontinuous, striped or spanning
A real IT guy would know that 8.1 might set the drive up for dynamic and that the volumes look just like partitions to Linux but don't work the same
A real IT guy would know that not all MS dynamic volumes would be readable by Linux
A real IT guy would know an 8.1 upgrade will always have a copy of the old system that can be recovered from once you convert it back to basic from dynamic
A real IT guy would have thoroughly read the materials on the MS site back when Dynamic was introduced with server 2008 and Vista
A real IT guy would never blow away perfectly good data, he would have just converted the disk back to basic
A real IT guy would have would have never gotten impatient during those long black screen episodes while booting, (sometimes 5 hours) during an upgrade, He would have understood it and expected it.
A real IT guy would have done ten systems yesterday, everything from a brand new acer Iconia to a 10 year old dog of a dual core pentium.

Original thread was made to give others a polite heads up to potential problems... Thought it was worthwhile posting since this was a fully clean, factory, non-modified setup that I ran the update on that caused problems. Mentioned I was an IT guy just to reinforce my statement that indeed this did happen to a unmodified Windows 8 setup during the update process (only non-MS software installed was vSphere client).

I'm not sure if you're hinting this is the case, but the installation wasn't interrupted at all, system wouldn't post.