Windows 10: Need help fixing system files

I do (supposedly) have a disk image on an external hard drive. I was not able to create a Recovery USB stick--error said files were missing from system. And after running CHKDSK, Event Viewer reported no errors.

I looked at the setup log, but the last entry was from December 2015 (probably when I upgraded to v1511).

Reluctantly, I am considering doing a clean install, as long as I can boot to a USB. I have the v1607 Win 10 Home setup files there.

I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Tom

 

Hi, which path you choose is up to you.. if it's not too time consuming to do a clean install (data/settings/number of programs).. then you can of course do that.

I would recommend you run chkdsk simply as a matter of course..

You could try an in-place upgrade repair install (see tutorials) - keeps all programs and most settings, then upgrade.

Plenty of people have upgrade problems, not easy to resolve, but that equally means plenty of material to research.

Note too that to upgrade you would (from what I've seen) need at least 450Mb of unallocated disk space, and about 10Gb spare space + enough for Windows.old - as much as your existing Windows folder.

Whatever you do, make sure you have a valid image that also acts as a full backup from which you can, if necessary, take files and folders.

 

"I extracted the Win 10 Home ISO (1607) to my D: drive and ran setup.exe from there in the hopes of keeping my files and apps ..... About 35% of the way through, everything stopped and I got a message something like "Installation failed".

I thought the plan was that you were going to copy the ISO from data drive D to desktop on C where the current OS is ? Did you try that, all ?

 

mrgeek, I didn't try copy the setup files to C and running from there. I finally decided to do a more drastic install by booting to the USB stick and running from there. All went well--I'm just facing the task of reinstalling programs (ugh). I hope, though, that I have expunged the broken system files that were giving me trouble. Now I'd like to figure out how to upgrade this computer from the Home version to Pro. I appreciate all your help. I guess this is "case closed," but Ill be sure to ask more questions should something arise.

Tom

 

Glad you're finally at a 'clean slate'. I keep a D drive with nothing but updated program installations so they're readily available, in case of clean install. It's not a bad thing, as you get a second chance to decide what you really want or need and you can find out if there are new versions.

Now I'd like to figure out how to upgrade this computer from the Home version to Pro.

You'll need to buy and upgrade license for $99 at the MS Store. Here's a good overview article, as to what 10 Pro adds and you can decide whether you really need it or not. There's a more substantial diff between 10 Home and 10 Pro than 8.1 and 8.1 Pro -
How to easily upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro | Windows Central