Windows 10: Upgrade from build 10061 to 10074 fails (Inaccessible Boot Device)

Hi all,

I keep getting the Inaccessible Boot Device error when trying to upgrade from 10061 to 10074. I *think* this may be due to my symlinking the \Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository folder to another partition on the same hard disk.

Why did I do such a thing? Well, that folder is 16 GB sitting pretty all by itself, plus Win 10, plus the update file(s), plus the new install, plus the temp files as stuff is transferred, and my 48.7 GB partition that I created is too full to update without that folder residing somewhere else.

I just wish MS had bothered to say "hey, you will need about 60 GB on the Win 10 partition if you want to actually use it as your daily driver"... I started with a ~20GB partition, resized it several times, and I'll be dipped if I have to go move to the 'left' and reconfigure all of my partitions yet again...

I already have:

1) symlinked my documents, pictures, videos, music etc to my data partition

2) told Steam to use the Steam library on my data partition

3) erased older Win 10 builds + drive cleanup of previous restore points, log files, etc, etc.

4) compressed the Win 10 partition (using the OS, not 3rd party)

I can't move the FileRepository folder back into the Win 10 partition or I won't be able to update due to a lack of ~10GB of drive space to play around in.



What do I do? *Mad

EDIT: Currently, I have 17.0 GB free on the Win 10 partition. I believe there's a Win 10 10074 update sitting in there... $Windows.~BT is there but only 200 MB, RecoveryImage is ~3 GB.

EDIT2: If I disable hibernation I can get ~4.75 GB back from the hiberfil.sys file. I still don't think that will allow a successful update if I move the FileRepository back though... maybe it could, now that I have compression enabled on the drive.

Does anyone have a way of getting an estimate for how much disk space Win 10 needs to upgrade?

:)

 

How to: 10 Tips before installing the latest Windows 10

i have 10061 build and updates of 10074 are stoped at 100% from many days . dont go anyfurther ?

 

Will Microsoft rip me off again and will activation fail?

Which build of Windows 10 are you running, 10130, 10122, 10074, 10061?

 

I am having the same problem but I tried to update from a mounted ISO on another drive. Found a folder taking up 25 gb of my 50 gb drive space so just deleted it and trying again from windows update.

 

How?

 

Download 10074 ISO x86 or x64 version, save to another drive, while in Win 10 right click on appropriate version in file explorer and click mount. Once mounted run setup.exe

Edit: Allow 25gb free space for install I have just extended my partition again, now will have to delete backups and start again as Windows backup doesn't like partition size changes.

 

I found it very interesting that you have such a huge FileRepository Folder as I look in mine, its size is only ~700 MB.
Surfing around in the internet, there some people who are having the same problem as yours and was advised not to remove the contents of this folder.

Every single Driver installed in Windows will first be placed in this Folder so perhaps some of the Drivers are old and become orphaned and since Windows 10TP_1074 is just my test Windows, sit by itself in a separate SSD and here's what I do to reduce the size of this folder.

• First, make a backup image using : Macrium Reflect Free
• From Admin command prompt, create a folder called Drivers on another Drive or USB stick type:
  Dism /Online /Export-Driver /Destination:X:\Drivers
  where X is the drive to save the current installed drivers.
• Delete the contents of FileRepository Folder. Skip those that cannot be deleted.
• Copy back the contents of the backup in Drivers folder to FileRepository

The FileRepository is now reduced to 352MB from ~700MB as shown:




In addition, If you have Windows Search option turned on. The Search Index (Windows.edb) database can grow up to many GB's.
Use this link to clean it up: Windows.edb file in Windows 8

NOTE: The way I did to clean up the FileRepository was just my testing and not sure if any body has done it. So try it at your own risk. FYI, I've done it and nothing is broken.

EDIT: The above just to answer your question but why don't you just do a fresh install of Windows 10 build 10074 which will be a lot cleaner and avoid instability as I saw lots of people are having.

 

I know. I just hate setting everything (programs settings, User profile symlinks, etc) back up again. :headdesk:

Thanks for all the replies so far, looks to be helpful, I'll try soon and post back.

EDIT: Huge size is probably due to Windows attempting repeatedly to install nVidia drivers, which fail because my GT 540M is Toshiba - branded, so only Toshiba drivers will work. I modified the .inf to get it to install, but then a new version came out and Windows update started installing that again and again. There was another driver that did that too, can't remember which one.

 

I too hate setting up everything again. I have a FileRepository of 33GB, an effective way of cleaning this store up other than deleting would be appreciated. Are all these files necessary?

 

If you don't want to try what I did then use DriverStore Explorer - Home . Right click to run as admin, click on enumerate then you can selectively delete items in the Driver Store.

 

Eh, exported with DISM and \drivers is now down to..... 15.6 GB Blah.

I've used RAPR before when I tried to slim down my \DriverStore folder but I put them all back as I thought that that might be why I was getting Inaccessible_boot (I thought maybe I accidentally deleted a storage driver so I copied the DriverStore from my wife's identical laptop).

I'll try slimming it down and then put it back on the Win 10 partition, hopefully that works.

I think why I get the BSOD is because the symlink only works when the drive letter is the same -- e.g., when booted into Win 7, the symlinks in the Win 10 partition became invalid, as Win 7 had assigned a different drive letter to my data partition. When I realized this, I assigned the same drive letter to my data partition in all of my OSes, and then all symlinks always worked, no matter which OS was booted.

Here's the problem: I have no way to change the letter assigned to my data partition by Windows setup when it boots into its pre-install environment, thus making all symlinks invalid, thus meaning the DriverStore\FileRepository directory becomes a dead link for the duration of setup.


EDIT: Here's my drivers (.csv file exported from RAPR, shared on Google Drive, should open up in a Drive spreadsheet).

Drivers.csv - Google Drive


As you can see, I have like two dozen of each of certain drivers (nVidia, Realtek are the worst).


EDIT2: Here is a .csv of the drivers loaded currently by my system. (Nirsoft DriverView)

drivers2.csv - Google Drive

 

Apparently the large size of the Driverstore is a bug from previous builds. MS are aware of it and have updated Disk Cleanup to take account of this fact, but having just tried it in Build 10074 it doesn't work! Also Build 100122 will fail to upgrade if too many drivers are in the store, as it hits an internal limit and rolls back the install. So I have just deleted the contents of FileRepository as I want to see if I can upgrade to 100122 without problem. Fingers crossed, otherwise I will have to selectively restore drivers from a backup.

Tim

 

So..:

I learned a very useful bit of info. Actually, quite a few things. For starters, at any point (after a few seconds anyways) during Windows Setup after it reboots, Shift+F10 brings up a cmd window. This window uses the System account (to check, enter the set command and look at the value for %USERNAME%). Let the games begin. *Biggrin

Found from DiskPart, as I suspected:

Code: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.10074] H:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.10074 Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation. On computer: MININT-KVSOTNG DISKPART> list volume Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- Volume 0 E J_CCSA_X64F UDF DVD-ROM 3606 MB Healthy Volume 1 C Win 7 NTFS Partition 300 GB Healthy Volume 2 F XP BE NTFS Partition 15 GB Healthy Volume 3 G Data NTFS Partition 460 GB Healthy Volume 4 H Win 10 NTFS Partition 48 GB Healthy Volume 5 D System NTFS Partition 1500 MB Healthy Hidden DISKPART>[/quote] Now, let me back up a bit:

I had already moved the actual files back into an actual DriverStore\FileRepository folder. I used the system account, you can see how to do that here, but the TL;DR is use Sysinternals' psexec from an elevated cmd prompt like so:

Code: psexec -i -s -d cmd[/quote] Follow that (in the new CMD window) with

Code: whoami /user[/quote] to double-check that it worked (side note: on an old Windows version {like XP}, enter the set command and look at %USERPROFILE%). Also note that you can launch things (like Explorer, regedit, etc etc) from this System cmd prompt and the new processes will be run as System as well.

So, I don't know if what I did during setup would have worked, as I had already taken care of the problem by moving the files.

To make this work, I noted that by having compression on, the 16GB folder became 9.7GB on disk. I then disabled hibernation with Code: powercfg hibernate off[/quote] , saving myself 5GB (your amount will vary depending on the amount of physical memory you have).

I then used WICleanup (working download link is now here) to delete my orphaned/unused MS Installer (*.msi) and Installer Patch files (*.msp) from \Windows\Installer (AFTER backing the entire folder up -- you don't want to be caught looking for a specific version of an .msi file from one of your programs while trying to upgrade / uninstall it; I've been there, it's a pain. I know these are supposed to be unused... but you don't know for sure they won't be needed later (as I can attest from previous experience!). Back 'em up! In WICleanup, you can select the first in the list (not the checkbox, I mean highlight the row), then scroll to the bottom, hold the shift key, and click to select the last row. Then, click the checkbox of any of the now-selected rows, and all of the items will be checked. To delete, for every entry, you're going to have to press "Y" to confirm deletion and then Enter or Spacebar to acknowledge success, I would do it in alternating fashion (Y-Space-Y-Space-Y-Space....) unless you want to click two boxes for every item being deleted...
So that (WICleanup) saved me 1.5GB.

I ran CCleaner, ran Disk Cleanup on the system files and also under additional options erased all but the most recent restore point.

Also, I knew Win 10 setup wouldn't take as much space during installation, as all temporary files, backup files, new files, etc etc are all going to be compressed since the drive is compressed by default now.

So, with the drivers on the Win 10 drive again, I had 14 or 15 GB of space free IIRC. Initiated 10074 setup from DVD I burned. Now we're at Windows setup and I investigate (using Shift-F10 cmd prompt) the drive letters, yup, Setup assigned my hidden system partition to the letter D.
I then opened regedit, (this is the registry of whatever Windows environment is responsible for the setup) and went to HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Copied the value for my Data partition under \DosDevices\G: (be sure to get it all , it will also select to the right / left) and then went to \DosDevices\D: and replaced the values there with the values for my data partition. Then I deleted the \DosDevices\G: entry (this makes Windows re-assign that drive).
Upon the 2nd phase of Windows Setup, loaded up DiskPart and my Data partition was listed as drive D.

So there's that.

For more reading, (definitely if you are at all confused or unsure of what I did) check these out:

Editing the MountedDevices Registry Key
How to Use the Diskpart Utility to Assign and Remove Drive Letters (couldn't really do this while the D: drive was in use (although it might not have been once Win Setup loaded, but I didn't want to chance it), but I knew if I edited the registry, it would take effect on next boot, so I did that instead)

Oh, and here's where the Windows Setup logs (failed or successful) get put: Log files that are created when you upgrade to Windows Vista from an earlier version of Windows

 

I just upgraded to 100122 after deleting the filerepository contents, everything seems ok. Running disk cleanup (system) and it found 10gb of drivers packages and 15gb previous installations.

So far so good, only took about 30 mins to upgrade, seems much more polished.

Edit: FileRepository is no 1.02gb

 

Hmph. Attempted install of 10122, got Inaccessible_Boot_Device, tried creating normal empty FileRepository directory instead of symlink and doing the install again, failed again. *shrug* Imma have to play with this one. First things first, deleted the temp install files and try allowing another install to start. If that fails, I'll try human-parsing the log files. Fun, fun.

Error code show after failover to old version was 0x80070070 - 0x30017