Windows 10: Old computers not yet compatible with 1703 (Broadcom 440x driver)

Cool! *Thumbs

 

A bit more info on that thread on the process of how Microsoft look into these things. I found the use of telemetry interesting too.

From
https://answers.microsoft.com/messag...3-a64b92445385

 

Thanks for that, David. Great info. *Smile

 

Also be aware there may be BIOS update prereqs or coreqs required as well. My wife's Dell is not quite 3 years old, the July 14th Win 10 Update made her WIFI switch automagically between discovered networks and then the Win 10 update a day or two ago completely knocked out any and all WIFI connectivity (WIFI Adapter Failure reported). Went to Dell and downloaded the May 2017 "Urgent" BIOS update (9343_A12.exe) and installed it. WIFI connectivity returned to automagically switching between discovered WIFI nodes so I rolled back the Broadcom Wireless Adapter Driver (7.35.333.0) and WIFI connectivity has returned to normal (no more WIFI auto-switching between nodes). WIFI connectivity has been very stable for the last 24 hours.

 

My laptop has the Broadcom 440x issue, but unfortunately I don't have an option to disable the adaptor in the BIOS, so the workaround of installing 1703 with the adaptor disabled doesn't work for me.

However, I did get it to clean install 1703 earlier today, by using the DISM utility to inject the latest cumulative update into the 1703 installer *before* actually running the installation.

And it worked too, so I thought I'd post what I did in case it helps anyone.

I perhaps made a mistake by using the Media Creation Tool to create a 1703 installation USB, because this uses a file called install.esd to hold the main Windows installation. If I'd used one of the various workarounds to download a straight ISO (eg. logging in to the download page with the browser User Agent String set to look like an iPad or something) I'd have been able to download an ISO containing install.wim, which would have saved me some steps.

Note that the steps below can go wrong in various ways to make sure you have backup images of everything you care about, before trying to follow these steps.

If you don't know what DISM is, then I suggest you don't try these steps, as things can occasionally go wrong and it isn't always obvious how to resolve them.

Here's what I did:
1 Use the Media Creation Tool to create a USB drive installer for 1703. My machine is 32-bit so I selected the option for the 32-bit installer.

2 Go to the Microsoft Update Catalog to find and download the latest Cumulative Update for 1703. At time of writing, it's: http://www.catalog.update.microsoft....px?q=kb4034674

Again my machine is 32-bit so I downloaded the 'x86' version, which got me a file to download called:
windows10.0-kb4034674-x86_277929e9393c8566e74eb72037bc7fd29cc6b406.msu

I created a folder called C:\Temp\KB4034674 to contain this file, so it's saved as:
C:\Temp\KB4034674\windows10.0-kb4034674-x86_277929e9393c8566e74eb72037bc7fd29cc6b406.msu

3 Copy the file install.esd from the \sources folder on my USB drive, to a working folder (C:\Temp) on my computer, and rename it to C:\Temp\install_orig.esd.

4 Create the subfolder C:\Temp\Mount in File Explorer. Then close down File Explorer altogether, and keep it closed, as I've had times when it can interfere with this process, just by having a certain folder open. I've had problems with the DISM command when I've been tempted to open File Explorer to see what's going on near to a folder with a Mounted image.

5 Open up an Elevated Command Prompt

6 Type this command (and press enter), to look for the "Index" parameter which describes the edition of Windows 10 you have on the target machine:
Code: Dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:C:\Temp\install_Orig.esd[/quote] For mine it was Index=1 as I have Windows 10 Pro, but a lot of people will have Index=2 for Windows 10 Home

7 Use this command to export the .ESD format file to .WIM format. Change the SourceIndex parameter based on the answer from step 6
Code: dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:C:\Temp\install_Orig.esd /SourceIndex:1 /DestinationImageFile:C:\Temp\install.wim /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity[/quote] 8 This step is like Step 6, and again we want to check the index value, but this time it's from the install.wim file. I suspect the answer will always be Index=1
Code: Dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:C:\Temp\install.wim[/quote] 9 This command 'mounts' the install.wim we exported earlier. By Mounting it, we can make changes (eg. adding updates). The Index parameter is the answer from step 8 (probably Index=1). It will take some time, as will the next few steps
Code: Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:C:\Temp\install.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\Temp\Mount[/quote] 10 This command applies the Cumulative update from step 2.
Code: Dism /Image:C:\Temp\Mount /LogPath:C:\Temp\AddPackage.log /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\Temp\KB4034674\windows10.0-kb4034674-x86_277929e9393c8566e74eb72037bc7fd29cc6b406.msu[/quote] 11 Now we want to save the changes and 'unmount' the image, using this command. This should leave an updated install.wim file in C:\Temp
Code: Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\Temp\Mount /Commit[/quote] 12 The original installer used a install.esd file, so I converted the WIM file back to ESD using the following command. The SourceIndex value is from step 8 again. Perhaps the installer would have worked with a install.wim file (?) but I didn't want to risk it.
Code: DISM /Export-Image /SourceImageFile:C:\Temp\install.wim /SourceIndex:1 /DestinationImageFile:C:\Temp\install.esd /compress:recovery /CheckIntegrity[/quote] 13 Now we should have a new install.esd file in C:\Temp. So we can use File Explorer (yes, you can use that again now) to copy that to the \sources folder on the USB drive and overwrite the \sources\install.esd file. Note that the original file contained multiple editions of Windows but we've made this version specific to just one edition, so you may want to keep the original install.esd for use on other machines.

14 Cross your fingers and use the USB drive to attempt a clean install.