Windows 10: Win10 forced upgrade taking over 24 hours

Hi all. MS apparently decided to upgrade my wife's comp from Win7 to 10 sometime in the early morning hours yesterday. Been on the black upgrading screen ever since - the upgrade is going along, but it's only at 25% (copying files is at 84%) and it's been about 24 hours now. Comp is about 4 years old, built with current parts for that time period, don't have it's details handy right now.

I've been dealing/building comps for over 30 years, and I've NEVER seen an install/upgrade take this long. Couple of questions:

What could be causing it to take so long?

Can I stop the upgrade without losing Win7 and her stuff, and how?

Thanks in advance!

MonEl

:)

 

Clean install stalled, won't restart

I upgraded from 7 to 10 with no problems and booted to desktop. When I started clean install process, it stalled at 41% for over 24 hours. I forced reboot and now the OS won't start. I can't seem to find a download link for Win10 install ISO anywhere.
Should I use the preview ISO? Would it be activated since I already succesfully booted once?

 

Upgrade running over 24 hours

Microsoft did a remote reinstall of Windows 10 at no charge for the user. It appears to have fixed the problem. Luckily, there was nothing on the PC that she will miss as I had a nightly backup running to an external HDD. Karen's Replicator comes through
again! Sure miss that lady since she passed away.

Issue has been resolved.

 

Hi MonEl327 and welcome to Tenforums.

Usually, a failure (or in your case, being stuck), that early in the process is a driver issue, or a needed BIOS update. A four-year-old computer should run W10 just fine. I have it running on a ten-tear-old laptop with an unsupported GPU. *Wink

Here's what I would do:
Download the custom rescue media available from one of our members, Kyhi (grab the W10 version, as it really doesn't matter which one you use at this point).
Hold the power button down to shut down the computer.
Boot to the rescue media; copy all her data to an external drive for safe-keeping.
Use the program ShowKeyPlus on the rescue media to grab the W7 keycode, if you don't have it.
Shut the computer down, unplug it, and hold the power button in for 15 seconds.
Reboot and see what happens. The upgrade process may finally fail and return you to W7 (like it's supposed to) - not sure, depends on where it was at, and if it can recover.

Your W7 installation may recover or may be borked at this point, hard to say. *Sad

If you can get into the W7 OS, I would download the W10 ISO, and do an in-place upgrade that way - seems to work better than Windows Update method for a lot of machines, especially W7 ones.
Windows 10 - Upgrade Installation - Windows 10 Forums

Please note the prep work recommended before upgrading. Sometimes 3rd-party AVs can mess things up, etc.

If it's a total goner, a clean install of W10 can be performed, using the W7 key to activate - an upgrade is not specifically necessary.

Hope that helps. Good luck and let us know how it goes. *Smile

 

Many Gallifreyan thanks for pointing me to that custom rescue media (and thanks to kyhi for creating it!), that thing is awesome!

Got that booted, got her files off, but couldn't get anywhere else. On restart, it'll go to the black screen with the blue windows logo, I'll get the spinning dots, but then it sits there, hd lights blinks a few times then lights up and stays lit, after 5 or so mins I shut it down. Did this a few times.

I've got her stuff, I'm using the rescue disk to format and going to try to install 10 clean, should work, hopefully.

Impressed that you've got 10 running on that laptop!

Thanks for the help, and remember...DON'T BLINK! *Smile

Mon

 

LOL Yes, it is, and I'm glad it worked for you to get the files off the thing. When you have a moment, please let @Kyhi know (on that thread), you successfully used it - he'll appreciate the feedback.

"I'm so, so sorry" you had to go through this.*Sad Yes, that should work. Just don't be lasagne! *Wink

You're quite welcome. I would recommend getting Macrium Reflect Free and creating images of the hard drives of all your systems, on a regular basis. It's much easier to restore an image than start over from scratch. The 1 year Anniversary update comes out in July...just sayin'.....Allons-y!

 

Glad It all worked out for you...
Thanks for the feedback...

 

New problem! Installed a legit copy of win7 I had, but I've exceeded the number of comps I can use with that copy.

How can I get Win 10 on the machine? I have the Win10 ISO, will it just let me install that on a formatted HD?

Again, thanks in advance!

Mon

 

you can install - but may not activate..

 

Hi Mon,
If you have the W7 key that was originally on your wife's machine, you can use it to activate a clean install of W10.

 

Even if I exceeded the number of comps I can use it with?

On the clean install of Win10, will it ask me for the key before it installs?

 

The installation will have an option to skip entering the key. You can add it later for activation.

I don't understand your key situation - is this a custom build? If so, you'll need a key for her system. If the key used for her system is at activation maximum, it won't work. If it's an OEM machine, the OEM W7 key will activate it.

 

Sorry, I should have pointed a few new things out. After post #3, the Win10 install hung (again). I got it back to Win7, but then decided to give her a better machine (better cpu, better mem) I had lying around, so I pulled the HD out of her comp and put it in another machine, not realizing that Windows would notice the change in hardware and want a new key. So...

I formatted and installed a different copy of Windows 7. Which is where I am tonight...when I tried to activate it, it said I was at max for that copy of Win 7. The thing is, BOTH copies of Win7 I have are OEM copies. I've used them over the last several years to install whenever I got new comp, not realizing I would "run out".

So I'm at a bit of a standstill now...my end goal has always been to get Win10 on the machine, I'm just not sure how to do it from here.

I could just get a Timelord to look into it... *Smile

Mon

 

*Roflmao2

OEM software that comes pre-installed on an OEM computer is tied to that computer.
OEM System Builder licenses are also tied to the computer you install them on (and then are supposed to re-sell).
Retail keys have transfer rights and can be unregistered from one system and registered on another using slmgr command.
Sounds like you need to buy another key? *Think

 

If I remember correctly, I got this from Newegg when Win7 was first released.