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

That sounds pretty straightforward - thanks. I've got the Macrium software and it looks like it can replace my Aomei backup/restore. I've been using Aomei for several years because it allows selectively restoring files and folders from a back up - I did not know Macrium has this capability too. So once I verify that this feature actually works I'll redo my rescue flash drive for Macrium and follow your procedure.

 

OK - looks like I am all set to follow your methodology. I got your mrimg file (304.21 MB) and made a backup of both partitions on my boot drive. I verified that I can mount the C: partition under Win10 and restore stuff from it. I also made and booted from a Recovery USB drive. So tomorrow I'll follow your steps and report back what happens.

I do have one question abotu Macrium: why does it not like my 2nds SSD? It seems to not realize that it is a regular disk.





PS: after looking at that last posting you quoted I'm even more happy that I never did RAID. With SSD's I really don't see the need any more.

 

From Disk Management. You have your Kingston SSD drive letter assigned as X: . It might be a collision with WinPE and Macrium Rescue disk is built with WinPE. When you boot from Macrium Boot disk or Windows Recovery disk, X: is reserved, everything is loaded into RAM and run from it. From the screen shot the drive letter of this SSD was taken out, made it hidden. Re-assign the drive letter such as Y or Z.

 

Got it - thanks. I changed it to W since it is primarily work/temp stuff.

Hmmm... W doesn't seem any better; the Macrium display is still the same. It really isn't an issue since I don't back that drive up anyway.

 

The Macrium restore failed rather badly. I got both partitions restored ok and the Fix Boot Problems appeared to run OK. But on reboot I got the Blue Screen message "Your PC needs to be repaired. Boot configuration data missing or contains errors"

I booted off my Win7 ISO disk but the repair function said it could not repair anything. Next, I restored my backup (only) after having removed both C: partitions. That ended up with the same results. So I formatted the drive and will try one more Macrium restore.

That worked - sort of. After the Macrium restore I still got the same error message, but this time the Windows ISO disk was able to correct the error. So now my system looks like this:





It's been about 10 hours working on this so far, so I'm going to take a break for a while.

 

If you look in your C partition you may see a folder named $Windows.~WS. It contains some log files. The setuperr.log lists all the errors encountered during the install. You do need to set the system to see hidden folders and possibly unhide protected system files.

If you look at the Setupact.log, it tracks the entire install. If you follow it down you will see percentage readouts. Look to see if the percentages stop before reaching 100% 100% 100% for the three operations. If they do stop then the problem may be noted in some listing above where the percentages stop.

 

No such folder exists, which is not surprising since my boot partition was created by a restore of my working system.