As the title says. After recent nefarious driver update I was playing game. Xbox extended feature support driver not installed, steam switched off. Game controller stopped responding in the middle of game. I turned it off and on, what caused BSoD. System broken at this point. I can't collect any logs for you.
#Latest nefarious update affected in breaking system during playing
tropic turtle
So let's get this precise; right now you can't even fully boot your PC, is that right?
sturdy rover
After full day of fighting I can boot in emergency mode and it is partially functional. After the BSoD it was impossible to do anything. Less experienced user would probably give up. It was mostly console work to restore emergency mode
tropic turtle
It would've been better to give up and seek help tho, who knows what you did that may make things more difficult. So you managed to get into safe mode, that's a very good thing though. Are you there right now?
sturdy rover
Yep
tropic turtle
So we can address a few culprits, let me get some links ready
sturdy rover
If it would be Linux, I would restore it in no time, unluckily Windows is bad in recover
tropic turtle
Full system backup software for Windows exists longer than I am but I digress 😉
sturdy rover
Sure. It exist just rarely works
tropic turtle
Fire up regedit and see if you can find the values mentioned here and follow the snippet under this heading https://docs.nefarius.at/projects/HidHide/fixing-a-bricked-system/#part-4-finding-and-deleting-the-correct-hidhide-entries
Also an important distinction; are you in safe mode (e.g. see your Desktop) or in recovery mode (see only a few menu tiles and maybe a cmd)?
sturdy rover
I can be in both. At this point I can even start normal, but Explorer is crashing in loop, and numerous system services not working
In safe mode explore works buggy but at least do not crash
tropic turtle
So when in safe mode, u can try to go into apps and features, find the VirtualPad runtime entry and try to simply trigger uninstall
sturdy rover
I can't. It throws error, Ms uninstaller is broken
tropic turtle
Well worry not, there's more ways
Open Device Manager, under USB Controller node is there anything prefixes with Nefarius...?
sturdy rover
Ok removed, but what was done is still done
tropic turtle
I can only help you in undoing what the setup does and then test if it has any positive effect. I can't think of anything with that much impact of a collateral damage, and we have like half a mil installs so...... Sounds to me like a nasty coincidence, maybe your system drive is silently dying and corrupting the OS?
It's not that complicated under the surface and the driver itself has zero overlap with anything to do with other hardware, or how Windows boots etc.
sturdy rover
It is almost new PC, everything in perfect conditions
tropic turtle
I'm just spit balling ideas, I haven't heard of such a thing in the last 10 years
There's roughly 2k update installs a day, so we should see a far bigger outcry of affected people somewhere
The setup and its internals use MSI and dotnet, something that's part of millions of machines without any issue
So I'm running out of ideas quite frankly
sturdy rover
I understand. I was not expecting any help, more like do warning to save others from the same problem
tropic turtle
I mean my test PCs have gone through years of abuse and still work surprisingly 😅 Windows usually is hard to kill, despite its flaws
Also these backup products have never let me down for over a decade easily:
sturdy rover
In-place update after removing the driver + nvidia drivers revived the system. Plus I had to disable TPM migration during update as it obliviously cannot pass. Just in case someone encounter the same problem
tropic turtle
"TPM Migration"?
sturdy rover
Yep, afaik it is currently impossible to do in-place update with tpm-driver-wmi migration. It fails in SAFE_OS / MIGRATE_DATA aroud 20-25% of update progress. That's why I had to remove it both from migration.xml of source system (my broken system), as well as from installation media
tropic turtle
I have to admit I do not have the slightes idea what that means, I know what the TPM is for but don't make use of it 
sturdy rover
When you do in-place update, installer moves the whole system to Windows.old, Installs system, then migrate all user data, registry and drives from old system. For some reason it cannot move tpm-driver-wmi, whatever it exactly does. Overall Windows support for TPM is a joke with bugs like this, or unnecessary enforcing it on older devices that cannot handle that. Before I got the idea I was thinking that my system is so broken it can't even handle installation media. But luckily it was just TPM driver. And to be clear, this is new computer, it fully supports everything.
Overall in-place update is like even more advanced solution than DISM /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth if you know that. In my case DISM was broken because of some broken services. But update does not required that, not even internet connection, as it works from USB/DVD
Just a solution to bring system to health status without guessing what exactly is broken
minor scaffold
So whatever all this
VirtualPad driver update installed ?
All working fine ?
If so, all that warning/red herring was pointless
sturdy rover
It was already day or two after installation, it was not like instant crash after installation, just random event during usage. Remind me in a few days and I will tell you.
minor scaffold
I get it but there's no evidence of vPad being at fault here
sturdy rover
Not direct. But indirect for sure. It was during the game, when pad stopped responding, and happened shortly after update. The only thing that changed in my setup was the update. It may be coincidence, sure. But there is significant chance it isn't. Anyway if it will repeat in the same scenario (hopefully not) I will take it as confirmation
minor scaffold
We still won't without hard evidence
sturdy rover
It's your choice, I have nothing to do with it
minor scaffold
It's not a choice, it's just a matter of logic
Jumping to conclusions without hard evidence is nothing constructive nor helpful
sturdy rover
Agree, but in the case where there are no logs, because the issues fully brake system, you can never have full evidence and just shadow the problem. But it will not make it disappear.
It's nothing unusual, I'm also in dev. Sometimes you have to work without logs, and none can help you because as the creator you have the best knowledge, and there is no man above you to help