Windows 10: Windows 7 x86 upgrade hangs on FIRST BOOT with spinning icon

Fat 16 was originally seen for the DOS/Windows 3.1, 3.11 days and carried over until Fat 32 was brought in with ME. NT, 2000, XP and all else since are native to NTFS while XP could be installed onto Fat volumes due to it's backwards support with Legacy.

For 10 a direct uprgrade at this time would now be pointless in contrast to putting a full fresh clean install on a fresh NTFS primary. The supported upgrade path from XP would have to be that since not even Vista can see a direct upgrade to 10. 7, 8, 8.1 are the versions supported. https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...ll.html?filter

 

FAT32 was brought in with Windows 95 OSR2 and that was the OS under which these partitions had originally been created. They were subsequently upgraded to Windows 98, 2000, Vista and 7, in that order.

I have ordered a copy of Acronis Disk Director 12, and upon receipt, will be able to put my theory to the test.

 

MiniTool Partition Wizard will change cluster size for free:
How to Change Volume Cluster Size | MiniTool Partition Wizard Tutorial

 

"Note: the function Change Volume Cluster Size can not be used in MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. So please download professional edition or advanced editions for this support."

 

Acronis is a good one! I run with the Acronis TI 2012 still here for imaging purposes. The problem with most free trial versions of the retail products is they will tend to be limited.

As for FAT32 that was OEM OSR2 with 95 not consumer 95 back then with 98SE able to go onto FAT16 volumes as well. But it was FAT32 not 16 that brought in smaller disk clusters as part of the improved FAT. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/154997

 

Yeah, it was OEM 95 OSR2, purchased in 1997, that would cause all those lost hours this last summer. To think I didn't even know the difference at the time. (I found out later, when hard drive sizes started expanding.)

 

OEM partitions are always maticulous with limited options for any custom situations. This is why when asked to debug a laptop new or older I have run into the need to see the drive wiped clean to start off fresh after someone got hit with a bug or simply ran into problems like deleting the wrong things?

Back in the 90s through the XP years you also saw the Proprietary limitations on anything OEM in contrast to how things have been made a bit more customer friendly in recent years. Drive capacities since Legacy to present has been a plus factor as well as far as custom set ups go. You couldn't do too much with 500mb drives!

 

I still have a 6gb? drive from the old machine. It has files on it dating back to 1990, and the installed OS is Windows 2000 (upgraded from 98).

I am hoping to bring this to a successful conclusion. My copy of Disk Director will be ready for pickup on the 3rd.

 

Both 98SE and ME supported upto 64gb so simply an upgrade out of 98 to 2000 wouldn't have been any problem except still a bit tight on drive space. Got a bunch of old drives here too from those old museum pieces but are now simply going to collect dust.

Now as far as the fresh re-partitioning and re-OS-ing goes I would lean towards running 10 as a stand alone after having seen everything that was running on the 64bit 7 Ultimate running on the 64bit 10 Pro without much of a fuss. Having the dual OSs on two separate drives I rarely even look at the 7 drive which seems to have been lost in the shuffle somewhere! The second remote/test pc sees 10 Pro/7 Pro there across two drives with both desktops having plenty of storage/backup space between both additional and external drives. A brand new 10 laptop had to replace an older 7 model that failed a bit after that saw a 10 upgrade go on.

 

After using Acronis Disk Director 12 to change the cluster size, I tried the upgrade again. It got past the crash at the start, but hung with the spinning icon on the reboot.

 

Vista(no longer supported) as well as 7 are simply geared for the present form of NTFS and the default cluster size. When trying to alter things Windows is simply hanging on startup not able to access the drive past the boot sector. That would be the first likely conclusion to make there. And Natively there isn't way to change it back to the defaults without a reformat of the drive.

Sector size changes for accessing larger capacity drives 2tb or more for example see support with 8, 8.1 while older versions besides XP's Fat support allowing for a small amount of diversity there require the 3rd party element to avoid the necessity of a reformat. The MS page you will want to review as far as what is supported by size of drive for example can be seen at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/140365

The Mini Tool guide for PW's ability to change cluster size can be found at: Change cluster size for 4K disk with MiniTool Partition Wizard.

That one goes into expanding upwards from 512B to 4096KB rather then reducing the size however which there is no information found for. Either the change you saw failed for not being supported or it didn't complete would be the explanation for the hanging up you are running into however. Upon seeing 10 upgrades at first simply hanging up with a list of errors I simply resorted to upgrade fail followed by full clean install to clean up mess made! Later a bit after the TH2 update flopped in two months and new Insider builds seemed to have corrected the early goofs upgrades by the WU seemed to be going on smooth as silk. But all these became 10 over 10 upgrades to update.

The new boot sector seen since 8 was first out however now just about mandates running a dual boot across two separate physical drives due to the since 7 seen Secure Boot which sees any other OS as invalid. To get 7 on the same drive with second part? 7 would have to go on first and then block 10's want to upgrade over 7 for the custom install to the second primary that would be waiting for it. A fast change from D to G for example when booted in one version for the other version's part is the first in order of business to tend to in order to free up the D letter for optical. For seeing 7 go on last as pointed out in the guide however you would first need to disable the Secure Boot obstacle that would prevent the dual boot.

 

For curiosity's sake, I tried the upgrade with 'keep nothing' selected. This time, it succeeded. That suggests the hang is due to the upgrade engine trying to migrate or remove some data, perhaps Office 97.

Research continues.

 

Sounds like it's time for a full clean install. Upgrade installs from previous versions is often found buggy at best and why many were urked by the initial need to see an upgrade over previous version type install back in 2015. The upgrades typically came out buggy!

One idea to consider as far as upgrades go in order to prevent potential issues would be to uninstall as much as possible to help the upgrade go as smooth as possible since there would be far less baggage to be carried over. The ideal solution however is a fresh clean install on a fresh clean primary where you start everything off fresh.

 

This install belonged to a relative who died ten years ago come May, and I intend to preserve it.

 

Creating a full system image backup of the drive would be the first step in any attempt to preserve it's present state. Any upgrade attempt would be an automatic change being seen. An upgrade of OS is just that a change of OS which often means changes seen not preservation of. I have two laptops purchased for someone now gone for good. The first saw the upgrade to 10 before that person passed away and also saw the display circuit or something else on the 2012 purchased 7 upgraded to 10 laptop.

The second was the brand new one year ago purchased Sept. 2015 model laptop that had apparently already seen the TH2 before sale and later the Redstone 1 but after that person was gone the previous week or so. That now simply sits in the carrying case unless someone of the immediate family of said decides to want to learn how to use since other family members already have been busy with their own systems.

Since that had been a replacement not the original gift laptop purchased back in 2012 allowances for anything in particular the 10 WU updates will be seen while mostly everything else will remain the same as the laptop collects dust from now on apparently for the most part. When someone offered to buy it soon afterwards I simply declined. It won't be seeing Windwos 11 or anything else newer going on other then 10 updates however without any specific intent to preserve everything as is 100% which any upgrade of OS as well as software change at your end would. For a 100% preservation as is you would have to leave it 100% untouched/unchanged. The image backup would be the option to help restore the prsent state in the event at some point the drive was found not to work.