Failed automatic update - KB4489899 and KB4486553

I think that is too much a wreck to fiddle with. But...

Oh, that's right, I forgot the MSR partition which is not visible in Disk Management. So, it is partition 3 that is your EFI partition, which holds the BCD & other important boot files. When you moved the EFI partition, it lost its identity. I think it was "Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Repair" that brought mine back. Did you try that? Otherwise try Set ID...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/cc753840(v=ws.11)

Set ID

Open an Administrator Command Prompt, & enter...

DiskPart

Select  Disk  3

List  Part

Select  Part  3

**Set ID=**c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b

Detail  Part

Exit

If that doesn't error out, Detail Part should now show EFI has its identity back. But you may still have to do a Startup Repair afterward to have Windows recognize it.

I doubt my previous installation used an EFI bios, it was built on a motherboard purchased in 2011. But either way, I'm fairly certain that drive wasn't present during install. Likewise I'm pretty sure I installed to unallocated space on Disk 3 since that's the default method one would usually use. But I honestly can't remember well enough to be 100% sure.

Bios version is 0228 (8/14/2018, initial version). I'll probably flash to 1005 quick and then try the Startup Repair and/or SetID methods just to see if they work. But if neither does the job, I'l just wipe it and start over with unallocated space.

Update: Bios is now v1005, didn't change much, though apparently the system drive is now Disk 4 instead of Disk 3 (it looks like it just swapped the addressing order of the two NVMe drives).

Attempting Startup Repair failed (gave message that it couldn't repair it)

Set ID worked, and the system booted into windows as normal (didn't need a Startup Repair). It seems to have correctly determined that the 100-MB partition is the EFI System Partition now, though it's not recognized as FAT32 anymore. This is what Disk Management looks like:

Going to attempt to apply one of the windows updates again to see if this has fixed anything. If not I may try to apply a Startup Repair again.

So, curiously, when I went use Windows Update it decided to serve me a new update (KB4497934), which installed successfully without issue. Now it says I'm up-to-date.

I even went to the Microsoft Update Catalog and downloaded KB4489899 (the first update to have failed on this machine), and it says it's no longer applicable to my system.

I'm assuming KB4497934 supersedes KB4489899? Unfortunately now we can't test definitively whether setting the partition ID is what fixed it. There are several other updates that have succeeded or failed in the meantime (log shown below), but it doesn't seem to want to attempt to apply any of the failed ones automatically.

I guess the only way to be sure at this point is to wait and see if any future updates fail in the same way KB4489899 did. If so, I'll be back to report it. Otherwise we'll just assume that the partition ID was the problem.

So, curiously, when I went use Windows Update it decided to serve me a new update (KB4497934), which installed successfully without issue. Now it says I'm up-to-date.

I even went to the Microsoft Update Catalog and downloaded KB4489899 (the first update to have failed on this machine), and it says it's no longer applicable to my system.

I'm assuming KB4497934 supersedes KB4489899? Unfortunately now we can't test definitively whether setting the partition ID is what fixed it. There are several other updates that have succeeded or failed in the meantime (log shown below), but it doesn't seem to want to attempt to apply any of the failed ones automatically.

I guess the only way to be sure at this point is to wait and see if any future updates fail in the same way KB4489899 did. If so, I'll be back to report it. Otherwise we'll just assume that the partition ID was the problem.