Man it has been a long time sense Windows murdered itself for me. 7 New updates just came in. As soon as it was finished I had nothing in the start menu (Literary, not even "Computer")  but file folders and Downloads.
 
I tried recovery five-six times and different times and ways. All fails.
 
Just started a fresh Win 7 install.
 
Now I am worried about updating any of my other computers and plan to wait a bit just in case this was not a fluke... Here are those new updates...
 

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I guess the last 2 updates on that list did the: "Hasta La Vista W7" on your rig. Thanks for the heads up.

strange i just installed the same ones and im good 

Demonik5150


strange i just installed the same ones and im good 

That is great to hear! It was the first time I had ever seen that. In fact my desktop only had the recycle bin. All of my other files and quick links are gone. Still had my Tron "Ladies" for the background though...

Sounds like it reactivated a different personal display setting or rolled back to the original one. It's a shame that you didn't retain your desktop shortcuts and view.

scaryone


Sounds like it reactivated a different personal display setting or rolled back to the original one. It's a shame that you didn't retain your desktop shortcuts and view.

What do you mean?
 
I tried all three of my saved profiles... All blank when launched...

What I mean is that there is the possibility it reverted back to the original installed desktop view. I have done these updates and they didn't change my system at all but I don't keep shortcuts on the desktop. I use the quick launch toolbar which you have to enable again in Windows 7. Most of my items to launch games/applications/whatever exist at the bottom on my taskbar.
 
[edit]
Since they were basically blanked out it may have just been an install glitch and I think I recall something like that happening to someone else I helped a while back elsewhere. I'll look to my references and see if I can remember the issue and what originally caused it on update.
[/edit]
 
[edit2]
Looking into my references from past helping it appeared first around this time last year on a similar update set of features. What happened to this client is that the update set all the desktop properties to 'hidden' for the folder in the user profile. Since the default view was to not show hidden files, folders and OS important files we had to change that folder option to see the items and then remove the hidden attribute in order for them to reappear again. Not saying this was your issue but it may have been related.
[/edit2]

^^^ Greatly appreciate those efforts!
 
What I can say is what I did above (Nearly nothing showing, only the "Search" function and downloads in the start/pop up menu) and I tried everything.
 
I was also just giving an example as the the desktop. I to use the task-bar for shortcuts, but my Drop Box and a few other temporary shortcuts, and my quick access files had been on the desktop. 
I am now installing all the software again. I already reformated. Figured it has been a few years and why not =]... 

Yeah , that's why I always suggest that you DON'T allow Windows to automatically update , as :  just that setting alone can interfere with a normal startup procedure.  When you boot your machine everything set has to load , and if you have a automatic update set (on Windows or any other program that is set in direct relationship to the main operating system functions) , your internet connection will go directly there online.  So... if you happen to step away or get distracted from the startup for some reason , anything can automatically happen.  In this case , the folders and downloads screen that was the result - is the desktop being reset to show a minimum of information.  You can do this manually.  Another thing I suggest staying well away from , is allowing ALL languages to be updated as well.  It's hard enough to tech english , but do you really want to doublecheck ALL languages for ANY errors?  Not to mention if you are running a fairly small SSD as your OS drive , you don't want the clutter of 100 languages to be on there , and automatically updated continuously on a daily basis.  If you set updates to "automatic" , having taken every option available that you can , your computer will be updated daily or more.
 
You could have fixed the desktop by going into the settings and deselecting the options that downsized your desktop.  You can do the same things inside your taskbar too.

Good info...^^^
 
Windows update is not on auto. I do them... Just happened to be rushed when I clicked to do it today...
 
I tried a LOT of the above suggestions.. But they all failed. And having restore and so on continue to fail. I figured it was to far gone.
 
I do have a server and update/backup daily. So 95% of my stuff will be back by morning...
 
Oh and I totally agree about the languages.. If I remember there are close to 60.. I select them all as hide...

I just wanted to second the fact I just installed all these and everything is good on my end! 

I installed all on my system also and everything went fine. It did show an update for Windows Live Gaming 3.5 that failed and failed again on the reboot. The thing is that about a week ago I was prompted to update when I startet to play an Live game for 3.5. The error message was not helpful as it pointed to Office or .Net Framework being the the cause of the issue.
 
I know that it's too late to check but did you see if you had been assigned a temporary profile after the reboot. I have had this happen in the past, mostly with Vista, and basically fixed it by logging in as Admin and copying the correct profile over.
 

Yes, I actually had no profiles, but I looked anyway just in case. Even created and removed a password in an attempt to get it to show me more than one profile...
 
I can also confirm three Win 7 x64 successful installs. I will also mention that I was not aware of the Office 2007 update and have left that out of the other three installs... SO I will try that tomorrow...
 
Like I mentioned above, might have been one of those flukes. Thank you all for your feedback and help!

 
I had no problems installing those updates. Everything is fine.

No problem with all the updates here either.