First all the info.
At last did a full back up of my Win 8 Lenovo laptop to a 1Tb Seagate external HDD. The LT is about 2 years old and well treated, no reason for suspecting any hardware issues at all. There were some odd behaviours but nothing serious. The Lenovo one key recovery button did not work, as example. I did some extensive manual file system re-organisation to tidy up My Documents (very weird after two years) and did a restore exercise. The result was that I got the Activate Windows screen.
Ignored this, but kept on getting the reminder, which irritated so I tapped the link. This got me the rolling pebbles and Checking this Key, after which nothing happened. Did this several times with the same result. OK, so now I will have to do a full recovery. Created the Recovery Disc on a cleared Apacer 32 GB USB stick and started. Everything went well, codes tapped in in both directions, Windows Activated and files restored. LT in working order.
Then something very funny.
Previously there were offers of updating my Win 8 (ostensibly from Microsoft) to 8.1. Did some research and found this thing will be some 6 GB to download, so I declined. One, it's a waste of bandwidth and money and Two I am not in any case in the habit of just updating for itself. 8 was working well in any case.
Now I was given a choice of when to do it. 1, 2, 4 hours or Remind me later. Coming from MS, I found this really high-handed. So I fobbed it off to Remind me later. That happened twice. Next time the Remind me later was gone. I cannot remember whether I tapped 4 hrs or it went away on its own, but somewhere there was a reminder that the LT would have be restarted to do this. I was at a loss, but carried on and installed my Glary Utilities Pro 5.20.0.1 update. This and all the other non MS apps I use have been tested to the extent that I eventually lost a Win 98 HDD. After that, I use only stuff that works like wire pliers. Pick it up, use it, put it down. Transparent and does not take control of my computer.
But there was catch. I had to restart to finalize installing Glary. This "Win 8.1 update" took control and I could not budge it. At some, much later, point I could reverse this process. There was some snag so 8.1 could not finish and it started installing "the previous version of the operating system". That finished and then it began "adding just a few other things" or words to that effect. This had a 40% progress tag attached to it. Well now, after four hours of this, I concluded that my LT was caught in a never ending loop or in parlance it hung. Still no control over it with any combination of Key taps.
I pulled the battery. Suppose that was a very stupid thing to do, but nothing else mattered anyway. In this entire process, this was the very first such hard system interference I attempted. Now, the Lenovo boot screen comes up, followed by the Blue Screen with a sideways frowny face telling me it ran into a problem and is getting some info. And guess what? It repeats untill you switch it off. Now you can atually do it.
Conclusion.
Either this is some very high handed action on MS' part (8.1 update) and MS/Lenovo's part (failed recovery) and not very well thought out to cover all eventualities.
Or it is some really bad malware. Luckily the back up is intact to what I can see. File sizes calculate to what is expected.
Question.
Can I safely wipe the HDD and do, say, a full recovery with a Recovery Drive and get my files restored? The back up was the full one under Windows management, not Restore with File History. There is some really important stuff from twenty years back.
Problem.
Only My Documents are restored from the back up. I also need to get the personalized and updated apps back intact. Already did one such manual restore. Glary, above, was part of that process. It's a mission. Alternatively, it seems I need to make an image of the HDD to get everything working within some reasonable time scale.
Irony.
Ignored all the demonic horror stories about Not Backing Up Your Hard Drive since, mark you, 1-9-8-7. 28 years, not a thing. Got my Commodore Amiga A500 then. 4096 colours on the screen AND a mouse. First on the street. Now I do my first officially legal and proper back up and I got a crashed computer! Now, aint that just peachy?
Think I'll go to Linux next. But first I have get my files out of the clutches of the beloved Microsoft.