Another exciting moment courtesy of Windows Update

So I logged onto my server last night - first time in several weeks. Happened to notice a couple of updates pending so I applied them and let it reboot.

Big mistake.

It became unable to get to my desktop except in safe mode. I suspect a driver problem because it responded to pings in safe mode+networking but when left in normal mode at the login screen it didn't respond to pings.

After restoring from backups (another PITA thanks to Acronis) it immediately applied updates and said it would like to reboot. I told it 'later' because I want the server running for today at least. I'm not going to tell it to reboot until the weekend but it leaves me in an obvious quandary.

Obviously I'm going to have to devote some 'quality time' to it at the weekend but I'd welcome opinions from people here on:

* What might have caused it?
* Do you think it was just random or do I have to hide one of the updates?

I'm no stranger to working with Windows but with an 'exciting' weekend ahead it'd be great to have other people's suggestions on hand.

The first thing I would do would be to look at what the updates were and Google them to see if there were known problems with either.

When you can spend some time on the server I would let it apply the updates again (unless the Google showed an obvious problem with one). If you get the same result you could try uninstalling them, in Safe Mode, one by one to determine which is causing the problem. Failing that it may be time to get on the phone to Microsoft Support.

What OS is this? You seem to have lots of problems with Windows Update - I'd be pointing the finger at 3rd party utilities.

Maybe coincidence - may be related:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/t/4088333-r...

If nothing else it might give someone some ideas if they find these posts in the future.