@AskChip I did. I even unplugged one and tried again.
Windows update flayed itself and I have to reinstall fresh

@xorowl UEFI made recovering boot images a ton harder than it needs to be.

@xorowl I've seen Windows eat itself so many times I now image them after install+first round of updates.

@AskChip whatcha use? I was thinking about doing that with clonezilla, imaging the whole disk to iso.
I'm lucky in my misfortune. The disk is only like 110gb, so keeping a full image should be easy.

@xorowl I mostly like clonezilla, but macrium reflect looks pretty good. However, The windows imaging tool kit works ok. The latter two can resize the partitions on restore as well without complications. Macrium reflect properly converts from mechanical to ssd also.