Windows IoT auto-updated then crashed

Question

Hi,

We have an RPi3 inside an industrial product. Working with it this week, I connected it to my network which gave it internet access. The device apparently proceeded to do automatic updates, and now loads up to gears with progress bar and then goes to frowny-face then reboots to nothing with the Pi blinking 7 times.

Forcing a reboot results in the same process repeating. We are not the developer of the app on the device (and are currently developing our own replacement) and do not want to contact them for recovery.

Things like this is exactly why we will be using Linux for deployment of our own version of the app; this particular device has basically NO security requirements and generally would never be connected to a network - so forcing updates is a bit silly when it can brick the device & my boss is kind of pissed. I am having a tough time even finding documentation on how to proceed on recovery.

I've imaged the SD card in both a full block copy as well as partition block copies. I can't even tell what build it is/was using/updated to.

Also - signing up here, I was forced to accept "privacy" which actually the label associated with said checkbox was for receiving emails..? And, because my tags weren't accurate, it pushed me back and removed ALL newlines from my post.. just bad code..