Windows 10: Problems upgrading old laptop from 1607 to 1703

I'm having problems upgrading my old laptop, which was happily running version 1607, to version 1703. Any ideas what I should try next? When I say "old" laptop... it came with XP, but has run Windows 8, 8.1, 10 Preview, and versions of Windows 10 up to 1607.

So far I've tried this:

• Download the ISO from the Media Creation Toolkit (MCT), mount it within Windows and run Setup within 1607. This seemed to work but when I got it started, it wouldn't connect to the network, either via WiFi or ethernet cable. But no yellow triangles in Device Manager (and all the drivers were working in 1607, as far as I know). I reverted back to 1607, which seemed to complete successfully.
• Download a fresh installer from the MCT again, this time using the MCT to create a USB, booting from that, deleting the old C: and reserved partitions within Setup, and clean installing. This ends up with circling dots, after the Getting Started message, but it doesn't get to OOBE; the dots keep circling.
• Take the above installer, extract the WIM file from the ESD with DISM, add some of the trickier drivers (previously saved with DISM) and then put it back to an ESD and run the USB installer again. Same result as (2) (which was better than I expected to be honest, given I'm not sure this is a recommended route- don't try this one at home, kids)

In both (2) and (3), if I press Shift-F10 and try a few commands, I can see there is some sort of running operating system, with System taking most of the CPU, but it never seems to get anywhere.
From (3), running Device Manager from command line again shows no yellow triangles or unknown devices.

I have a Macrium backup of it running 1607, which I can revert to if need be (at least as a medium-term measure; I know 1607 will eventually go out of support), but I don't want to let 1703 beat me! And I really don't want to revert to Windows 8.1, which seemingly will be supported longer.

Any suggestions on what to try next?

:)

 

Windows 10 upgrade to 1703

Hi, we are a second level school in Ireland (ages 12 - 18) with 30 desktops, and 25 laptops, in a school computer lab.

We have a VLSC licence . I used the images from VLSC to clean install Windows 10 (v.1607) on all our machines successfully.

Now the desktops will not upgrade from v.1607 to v.1703 - they end up in a permanent loop, never finishing.

But the laptops are upgrading from v.1607 to v.1703 without any problems.

I am told our licence is an upgrade licence - but the clean installs worked on all machines & the upgrades are ok on the laptops.

One other observation is that Windows is starting to take up large amounts of space on some desktop hard drives.

I could disable updates, but I would prefer not if possible.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you, Ger Lally.

 

Still no creators update

I have a Toshiba Satellite P50-C-12z (PSPTSE) laptop running Win 10 1607.

I have never been offered the 1703 update.

I am aware Toshiba's had an issue with a display utility which I have now uninstalled.

Now in November I am still not being offered the 1703 update, I can no longer even manually trigger the 1703 update as it has been replaced by 1709.

I don't want to manually trigger 1709 if there is a possibility my laptop is incompatible.

Toshiba's compatibility lists don't include my Laptop, but then it doesn't include it for 1607 either so its not very reliable.

Will I ever get the 1703/1709 update?

I am getting nervous that my laptop will be obsolete in March 2018 if 1607 support ends as planned and I can't upgrade.

It is only 2 years old so I will not be impressed.

 

Tell us about your hardware. (Make/model, at least.) If it needs drivers, that will help locate them.

 

It's an Acer Aspire 5633.
I haven't found recent drivers on the Acer website, but using the drivers which it had with 1607, I can't see anything obviously missing in Device Manager.

 

Can you gain anything by using the troubleshooter (e.g. rt click tray icon) or using just the relevant repair in Tweaking.com's free cautious repair tool?

 

Possibly. Although I'll need to get it going again first, clean install seemingly isn't getting to a normal running installation.

Unless there are command-line methods of running those tools which I might be able to run?

 

As the clean install is failing, I would check the disk first (basic) e.g. using Kyhi's boot DVD/flash drive from the top of the software and apps section here (Win 10 environment) and run HDtune which is on the disk.

Then for a failed installation you could have a look at the logs.

 

According to the specs of your Acer Aspire 5633 it has 1GB of DDR2 ram !

How much ram do you have ?

 

Ah yes I did upgrade it to 4GB at some point.
(Although 1GB is in theory enough for 32-bit Windows 10, which is all I'm trying to run on it.)

 

Where do I find logs after a clean install?
My suspicion is that the disk is OK because it ran 1607 OK when I reverted it. Plus creating the Macrium image (in fact 2, as I have an image of the non-working 1703 upgrade too) didn't cause any errors to show.

But I'll check up with those tools later/over the weekend.

 

You're probably right about the disk given Macrium was happy, but best start with basics.

Logs? One does an internet search for e.g.
"windows 10" install logs

This is for Win 8, I guess it's very similar.
Windows Setup Log Files and Event Logs

The log to study is setuperr in C:\Windows\Panther
See also:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../hh824819.aspx
Get-WindowsUpdateLog

 

This sounds very like the issues I encounter with my old Acer 9301. Like you, it came with XP, I got the free Vista upgrade and ran that for many years. Then 8, 8.1 and Ten in various forms.

Ten is a problem. The installation gets almost to the end and then freezes with the circling dots progressing slowly and jerkily. From that point and if I leave things I can get to a normal desktop but it takes around 5 hours. The problem for me is the Atheros WifI driver that Ten installs by default. It locks the system up with excessive interrupts. Once I have the desktop up I can go into device manager and disable the Atheros driver. That restores normality and I can then install a working driver.

I run the 32 bit versions on the Acer. The anniversary update seemed to cause lots of disk thrashing and a generally poor user experience, its sluggish. The creators update I have failed to install. I've actually reverted to Vista again on that laptop and it runs like a dream all things considered, so much more snappy than Ten. Its really to old and the lack of driver support is crippling for it.

If your is an Atheros 5005G (I think thts how it shows in device manager) then I have a 32 bit WifI driver and also an NVidia graphics driver for the GeForce Go 6100 card.

 

Thanks for that.
The "circling dots progressing slowly" sounds very similar to what I'm getting, and it's possible that if I'd not been impatient and left it to run for a few more hours, it would have got to the desktop for me too - that's another thing for me to try.

How did you identify which driver was causing the excessive interrupts?

I'm pretty sure the WiFi is Intel and not Atheros on my laptop , but I like the theory that it's a driver issue.

Thanks for the kind offer - I'll have a look over the weekend but I'm 99% sure it isn't an Atheros driver on this one.

 

It was trial and error. Once I could open task manager (and that takes about 5 minutes) I could see it was the interrupts causing the 99% CPU usage that was locking things up.

From there it was just trial and error although Wi-Fi seemed to be the only driver that got installed.

You have to be prepared to allow it lots of time to action anything to attempt this. For example make sure that you hold a mouse click for say 2 to 3 seconds to ensure it gets picked up. Then just wait for the action to occur. A couple of minutes or more to even begin to open device manager. Same again to open network adapters and so on. Just do one operation at once and wait.

I remember now, it stalls at the point it asks you to set up a user name and connect to a network. It timed out on the connecting stage. From then on the 'getting a few things ready' section takes a few hours to complete.

For me, the latest W10 versions run so poorly on the Acer that I haven't pursued it further. I tried the 64 bit version and that won't install at all although the laptop is x64 capable.

Good luck *Smile