BSOD after Windows update, can't reset or recover Win 10

[Enigma80]

Hi,  my laptop keeps going to BSOD after many attempts to reset/recover I still can't get it to work.

So my son was playing an old game on it, but it stopped working after working fine for years.  I looked online for possible issues and saw that a few people had issues since a display adaptor update.  I tried deleting and reinstalling the game but it didn't help.  At this point I did a windows update and it did longer cumulative update.  As it was installing it went to BSOD. 

So I assume that the update didn't work or tried to install an incompatible driver. 

The Stop Code is provides is: VDF_Violation

Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Start-up Repair - diagnoses and then reports that it couldn't repair the PC.
2. Reset - goes through the motions and then says it didn't work
3. HP Recovery Manager - doesn't work
4. Uninstall updates - both the quality and feature uninstallation don't work ("ran into a problem...")
5. UEFI - system diagnostics don't reveal any issues
6. Safemode - ran SFC which found a few issues and repaired them. Also ran DSIM which didn't report any issues.

I was only able to boot up in Safemode after a number of attempts.  I don't seem to be able to open HP Support Assistant from Safemode.

Does this mean that the recovery image has been corrupted even though DSIM didn't report any issues?  

Ideally I'd like to go back to the current installation of Windows.  Initially I was assuming this wasn't going to be possible considering I couldn't get into Safemode, but now that I can, what are my options? 

Is there a way I can isolate the driver issue in Safemode?  I've used MSConfig to try a diagnostic startup - only loading basic services - this still gives me BSOD.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

If you believe that a graphics driver update is the culprit, boot into safe mode, go to the device manager.

Click to expand the Display adapters device manager category, click on the graphics adapter listed there, click on the driver tab.

Click on roll back driver if you have that option.

If you do not have that option, right click on the graphics adapter, select uninstall and check the uninstall driver box.

Restart the PC and see if Windows sorts out the issue.

If the graphics driver does not reinstall, install the latest driver from your notebook's support page.

Driver - HP ENVY 15-cp0000 x360 Convertible PC | HP® Customer Support

Worst case scenario if nothing works...

Go into safe mode, copy any files you need to save onto a portable hard drive, and use the HP cloud recovery tool to create a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with the notebook.

Here is an info link for how to use that utility....

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool in Windows 11 and 10 | HP® Customer Support

[Enigma80]

Hi, thanks for the quick response.

I'm not sure if it was the graphics driver that caused the issue, but it was during a Windows update.  The graphics driver was an issue I believe for the game not working anymore.  It was after this that I did a windows update and it went to BSOD while the update was installing.

I'll try the  graphics driver though, just in case.  I've copied everything off it last night.  It has a 1TB data drive and a 250GB SSD.

If I do a full factory reset (only tried the OS option so far) will it wipe the 1TB data drive too?  

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I am not sure what the cloud recovery created media will do.

If it gives you an option as to what drive you want to recover then it will only recover that drive.

If it just tells you it is going to format the drive and reinstall Windows, I suggest that you temporarily disconnect the 1 TB drive so that the recovery tool does not format that drive and reinstall Windows on it instead of the SSD.

That would not be good.

[Enigma80]

Hi, I've managed to install windows again, but had to speak to a HP Virtual agent to a link as the one's you posted for the Windows cloud install didn't work.  I had to go directly to MS site and download it from there.  

Anyway, i managed to install Windows again now on the OS drive and it's not touched the data drive, which is good.  One thing I noticed when asking which partition to install on, the primary OS drive had a load of partitions created that weren't there before.  I deleted them all so the OS drive was a single partition and left it at that.

Is there any point in keeping the recovery partition now considering that it didn't work?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

You can delete the recovery partition because as you indicated, it won't be of any use.