Windows 10: "You can't install Windows 10 to a USB drive using setup" cure?

My internet searches on that message have yielded two ways of "fixing" that message when trying to install Windows 10 updates using a downloaded Windows.ISO file. The fixes are here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id...ash-drive.html

My question is: Why are those "fixes" necessary on some computers and not on others? My wife's computer is a twin of mine, and in her registry, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control. "PortableOperatingSystem", is set to "1" and it has downloaded and installed the latest Windows 10 upgrade without having to be set to "0" (presumably telling the update to install on the hard drive rather than a USB drive).

:)

 

windows 10 upgrade to version 1511,10586

Does anyone else have the same problem with this upgrade not installing? I keep getting the warning that it can't install and the " fix issues" doesn't do anything but loop. I get the message that " you can't install Windows on a USB flash drive using
Setup." This is ongoing since November.

 

Windows 10 insists I am trying to install to a USB drive.

I have stripped out all USB devices and hubs and the second hard drive and refreshed the device manager. I am using the keyboard and mouse from an identical machine that upgraded with no problem from Windows 7. This machine is running Windows 8 and when
I hit the "Get Windows 10" app on the toolbar it gets to checking requirements then stops and says "You can't install Windows on a USB flash drive using setup". I'm not so what do I do?

 

Just to be sure that readers know what the problem is, my Windows 10 Pro will not install the 1709 update to my computer.
From another computer site, I received a way of resetting my computer's update control file. I ran it, but it generated errors.
Here is a screenshot of those errors. I hope someone can provide a way of fixing them.

 

What I see could be an issue is incorrect commands in the last 2, shouldn't be as many spaces after the > before ren and needs a backslash \ after SoftwareDistribution instead of a space and a backslash \ after catroot2 instead of the space. Such mistypes will always return an error message.

 

It was an, already written, batch file which I ran, so I don't know.
But the "c:\windows\system32> net stop cryptSvc" seemed to work though.
Nevertheless, I cannot find the source of that Regedit batch file now...I have done so many searches on the problem.
In any event, here is a screenshot of the whole batch file as run:

 

Could be that you already have a SoftwareDistribution.old and a catroot2.old, so, try renaming them to *.old1 or *.old2.

 

I am not sure how one would actually do that. I would need a step-by-step before I would even attempt it. Also, note that there were more errors than just two misnamed files.

Here is the link to the downloadable batch file I was talking about (which I ran):
Reset Windows Update in Windows 10

 

So your system currently has 1703 on it?
Can you run winver and post a screenshot?
Have you tried downloading the latest ISO and mounting it, and running setup.exe from within your current W10 OS?

 

Have you run the Windows Update Troubleshooter?





The batch file you ran is simply a bunch of commands that you could put into an admin command prompt manually. Brink made the batch file, to make it easier to do. But if you're renaming files to filenames that already exist, you'll get an error (like the last 2 errors you got).

If you want to do it manually, the steps are here:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/manual...ate-components

But I would try the Windows Update Troubleshooter first.

 

1703 on my comptuer
version 1703(os build 15063.966).


Been there...done that (downloading the latest ISO and mounting it, and running setup.exe from within your current W10 OS?). It did not work.

 

Troubleshooter did not fix the problem.

 

I think that I could figure out how to do the renaming as you suggest, but I have two other errors that I have no idea how to deal with:

 

Your BITS and Installer services are not running.

Type services in the search bar, open services and look for those two services.
BITS should be set to Automatic (Delayed Start) and Windows Installer should be set to Manual.

Sometimes Windows Update will be disabled by an infection - are you sure the system is clean?
You can try running ADWCleaner to see if anything is lurking:
Downloads - AdwCleaner - ToolsLib
SCAN, then CLEAN (reboot)
Post the logs here if anything is found.

Have you run sfc /scannow from an admin command prompt to check the integrity of the Windows Filesystem?

What software is different between yours and your wife's computers?

Does your wife also have a cloned drive in hers?

 

I set BITS to Automatic...I do not know what is meant by "Delayed Start". Windows Installer was already set to Manual.

Ran ADWCleaner a couple of times, nothing was left lurking. Rebooted.

"...did not find any integrity violations."

She has Windows 10 Pro also, but her's upgraded automatically to 1709 without incident. She has greeting card software, picture/photo handling software, some games. We both have Glary Registry Repair, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Windows Defender running, I have Grammarly, AOMEI hard disk Partitioning and MiniTool partition, CCleaner, Marium Reflect, LibreOffice, CDBurner, etc. Too many to list.

I ran Windows 10 Update Assistant after the above changes and it crashed as usual.