Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology Driver update prevents Thinkpad from booting up

[Ginnys]

I've spent days trying to track down what crashed my laptop and this is what I've narrowed it down to.

I have reinstalled Windows 10 20H2 and turned off Windows Updates. I then loaded some updates from the Lenovo website for this Thinkpad P52s, but did NOT allow the critical update of the Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology Driver version 17.5.1.1021 to be installed.  Then I created a Windows Restore Point. 

Now I can CONSISTENTLY install that Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology Driver version 17.5.1.1021 and when I restart, Windows will NOT boot.  It starts the boot cycle, but then just displays a Boot Manager screen to select a drive to boot from and the SATA hard drive is not in the list.  From there I can try Repairing Windows, but it just fails. The only thing I can successfully do at that point is either restore from my Restore Point or reinstall Windows.

So, I could manage with this, except that if I turn on Windows Updates so that I can get Windows security updates, it will also automatically this RST drive too and crashes the system again.

The first time the problem occurred was on June 8 when the laptop was still running Windows 10 2004 I think.  Everything had been running OK until that morning and I think when Windows pushed out Tuesday updates that morning and the laptop restarted, that's when I got the first boot manager screen and couldn't boot.  That day I tried restoring to a restore point, but it returned some kind of error that said a restore couldn't be done.  It looked to me at that point it was a Windows Update or hard drive crash or something, but since I could reinstall Windows and can function just fine until I apply updates (specifically that Intel RST update), then that's why I'm posting on Intel.

Any guidance or advice would be appreciated.

[AlHill]

So the Intel support engineers can have more information about your system, Download, run, and save the results of this utility as a text file:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility

Then ATTACH the text file using the instructions under the reply window ( Drag and drop here or browse files to attach ).

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)

[AlHill]

In case you cannot run the SSU, provide this informaiton.

Is your bios legacy or uefi?

Is your sata mode ahci or something else?

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)