Windows 10: How to determine what caused Anniversary Update to fail

I downloaded the Anniversary Update and ran it. It seemed to be doing ok - the % complete got up to 91%, including several restarts, and then I got the frowning face icone with the message "Something went wrong". After that my screen said it was restoring my previous version, which is what I am running now and seems to be OK.

So what now? How is one supposed to figure out what caused the update to fail? I've looked at the upgrader_default.log file but don't see anything helpful in there. There are a couple of error messages with code 0x80070002 but searching that ends up at a MS page that says support for XP has ended.

My boot drive now has a 15.5MB directory called WIndows10Upgrade that has a lot of stuff in it. Is there something in here that's worth running to see what's wrong? Or should I just stick with my current version and wait for the next "upgrade"?

:)

 

Upgrade W10 V10240 to V14393

What is the make and model of your computer?

Have you checked the manufacturers website to determine compatibility with the Anniversary? See for a list of systems:

Check
this List to Determine if Your Computer is Compatible with the Windows 10 Creators Update or Anniversary Update or Not



also review:

http://windows10forum.com/blogs/entry/3-how-to-ensure-a-smooth-upgrade-to-windows-10-anniversary-update/

and

How
to Upgrade to Windows 10 Anniversary Update version 1607 using ISO File

 

Upgrade W10 V10240 to V14393

Thanks, i'll check it and try yours.

 

Please post a screen shot of disk management:
Screenshot - Take in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

Drives C: & X: are SSD's. I see that the old 100MB hidden partition on C: has been replaced with a new 450MB Recovery Partition. I presume this has all my old (and still current) Win10 stuff in it. My current version is Build 10586.

I found a posting that said a fix for a similar problem was to disable StarDock's WindowsBlinds add-on. I do not have this, but I do have their ObjectDock add-on. (It seems to be the best launcher app out there.) I tried again with ObjecetDock disabled, but the upgrade still failed and put me back to Build 10586.

 

On a normal Windows 10 installation. You should have a 500MB System Reserved partition containing BCD (boot configuration data) and Recovery software and C drive. Apparently, when you installed 10586, you did format the C drive so Windows put everything in C drive (C drive marked as Active). In addition, Your disk 3 should not be marked as Active since it is not a bootable disk.
I think you'd need a 500MB partition in front of C drive, use EasyBCD software to move the BCD to this partition then try to upgrade again.
In addition, uninstall any anti virus software + run sfc /scannow to make sure that's there no system files corruption.

 

Very interesting - thanks. TO do my 7 ==>10 upgrade I performed the standard upgrade, but then reformatted my boot drive and did a clean install of 10. My 7 was really old and I didn't want to carry any of that mess forward.

I've not used EasyBCD before, but I'll give it a try. And I should have caught the fact that Disk 3 was marked active - I'll fix that too. Will report results back here.

Well that sure was a mistake!. I got disk 3 marked as Inactive and created a 500MB partition on C: and then used EasyBCD to copy my BCD info there. I looked at the new partition and there was real stuff in there, so I figured it was OK to reboot my system.

What I got was the message "An operating system wasn't found." Fortunately I have a recent whole disk Aomei backup of my boot drive, so I'll restore that. Not sure what I'll do after that - probably just ignore this update since my current system runs A-OK.

 

Well none of that worked. I was able to restore my C: partition but the same message occurred. I ran bootrec /fixMBR, bootrec /fixBoot, bootrec /rebuildBCD and that didn't help. I booted off the Win10 ISO disk and tried Advanced/Repair Startup Problems, but it said it couldn't fix anything.

I thought maybe the BCD partition that I created with EasyBCD might be confusing things so I formatted that partition. The bootrec commands still didn't help. What did work was to go into the BIOS and disable all disks except my boot disk and my BD/RW drive. WHen I bootoed the Win7 ISO disk this time the Startup Repair said it was reparing something. AFter that my system booted OK, so I went back to the BIOS and re-enabled all my drives.

Now my disks look like this:





Tomorrow I'll probably delete the Empty partition and expand C: to reclaim its space.

 

Apparently this has changed and the recovery partition is now recommended to be after not before the C drive. In any case it shouldn't matter where it is.

OEM deployment of Windows 10 for desktop editions

From the latest picture it looks like you can delete F and extend C to use this space. You need to confirm that the WinRE partition that is being used is the last one. To do this please post the results of reagent /info and diskpart list partition command for that disk as described here. windows 10 Anniversary upgrade created a recovery partition - Windows 10 Forums

If you do delete F and reclaim your space you'll probably need to re-register the RE image as the partition number will have changed.

To do this you would mount the partition in diskpart
Code: diskpart select disk 0 list partition select partition 4 (probably) assign letter = t[/quote] and then from elevated command prompt
Code: C:\Windows\System32\Reagentc /setreimage /path T:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows[/quote] Deploy Windows RE

 

How did you use EasyBCD ? copy BCD info won't work, you need to do as shown below where New Boot Drive is the drive you want the Boot file to be in:




FYI, Here's a normal 500MB System Reserved partition that I took a snap shot of my system. Containing WinRE.wim and BCD, marked as "Active"







NOTE: It is easy to reconfigure your C drive to look like mine then you can perform the upgrade.

 

Well OK, I think I understand what needs to happen here. But before I do anything beyond reclaiming the 499MB of space following my C: drive I want to get more info about a few things which I'll list below. But at this point it appears the answer to my original question is "There really is no way to determine what caused the upgrade to fail."

In my case it could have been that I had 2 disks marked as Active. Or maybe it was because my Win10 installation was done as a clean install on a freshly formatted drive. Or maybe it was some other totally random error of some obscure type.

I realize I might have/probably did shoot myself in the foot by trying to use EasyBCD without really understanding what it was doing. I did not use the BCD Bakup/Repair function - because I thought what I needed to do was place a copy of the BCD stuff into the newly created 500MB partition. So I used the BCD Deployment function, which required me to format the 500MB partition and give it a drive letter. "Deployment" to me suggests that the BCD stuff will be put in the location you specify, and I did verify that there was a bunch of stuff in the 500MB partition after I finished the BCD Deployment function.

Obviously there are some critical points about this BCD stuff of which I am unaware and/or do not understand.

Before I try this again I'll want to find out about

(1) do I need to create an empty 500MB partition on my boot drive prior to running the upgrade (I think the answer to this is no.)
(2) what is the 450 MB partition doing on my boot drive and can I delete it/re-use it's space to make a 500MB empty partition (if needed)
(3) in the first posting by babis49 on the thread "windows 10 Anniversary upgrade created a recovery partition", what are those 3 partitions with no drive letters, how did they get there, and which ones are really needed.
(4) Whether or not I have to create an empty 500MB partition, should I disable all my other drives before running the upgrade
(5) What is a good piece of software for fixing the MBR/BCD stuff if it breaks and what is the procedure for doing so
(6) Why is the best option when the Win10 ISO disk says it cannot fix a boot/startup problem
(7) What is in a Recovery Partition and what is it used for

I think I have a lot of work cut out for me.

 

I got my 500MB back - see image below. But I discovered there is now a 2.88BG directory called Windows10Upgrade on my E: drive. This directory has only a single file in it: 14393.0.160715-1616.rs1_release_CLIENTCombinedSL_RET_x64fre_en-us.esd.

Naturally I have no idea how this file & directory got there, what it is supposed to be used for, or why it is there. What I'm going to do is delete it. My E: drive is a data-only drive where I put Aomei backups, BluRay disk ISO files, and rendered video files. All my temp/tmp and download files go to my X: drive which is a 64GB SSD with about 60GB free space.

At any rate, this is what my system looks like now:

 

From your latest post. You did set it back to the original.

My answer would be yes even though your system is running fine. But the upgrade would fail if this partition is missing.

Windows Upgrade create this 450 MB partition to put a new WimRE.wim (Basically it is a WinPE version containing a set of tools for trouble shooting specifically for version 1067.

The post in this thread does not really apply to your situation. His Windows installation used GPT partition scheme. Yours is MBR

No

Macrium Reflect Free . Been helping other people with similar problem as yours.

Not the best if your partitions are not in the right order.

Already answered above.

 

topgun: thanks for your continued interest and support. I will definitely take a look at Macrium Reflect.

It does seem odd that there has to be a 500MB partition created before running the upgrade. Does MS really expect normal people will be able to do this? And if this is a requirement, why don't they say something about it?

Also - my current version of Win10 is 10586. So if I need a 500MB partition for the upgrade, and the 450MB partition is for 1067, could/should I delete this partition completely and then create a new 500MB one, thus taking only an additional 50MB from my boot drive?

PS: did you ever have anything to do with F-4's? I've got some neat stories for you if you did.

 

As I said above, a fresh install of Windows 10 will give you a 500MB and C drive only. However, in previous versions (Win 7, Win 8/8.1) the reserved partitions for those are small 100MB for Win 7 and 350MB for 8/8.1, not enough room for the new code for Windows 10 so they create an extra 450MB and move WinRE.wim (over 300MB) instead of re-partitioning drive C which would take a long time to upgrade.
Here's my suggestion if you wish to follow:

• Download and install Macrium, from Macrium: create a USB Rescue disk (important)
• From Macrium, create a backup image of your C drive only and store it in one of the drive (D: or E°
• Download my 500MB Reserved partition: BootMBR_Only-00-00.zip - Google Drive
  Unzip and store it in the same place with your C drive backup image.
• Boot up the USB rescue disk, browse to where you save the images, select the 500MB first to restore
• Select your current Windows C drive as destination, click on each partition then click on "Delete this partition" until the destination drive shows empty.
• Click on 500MB, drag and drop to the destination, click Next->Finish to restore this 500MB partition first
• Again, browse for your C drive backup image, drag and drop after the 500MB, Next->Finish
• Click on Restore tab, click on "Fix Windows Boot Problems"
  
  
  
• Reboot your PC. Try to upgrade again

P.S A similar problem is in this thread where OP could not upgrade his MBR Windows (same as yours) but in addition, he also wanted to convert to GPT.
Solved Small Wrinkle in Anniversary Update....MBR Disk - Windows 10 Forums