Windows 10 anniversary update problems

[VJ]

Hello,

I'm trying to update my laptop with the Windows 10 anniversary update. For that, I downloaded the update assistant. Everything goes fine (had a bit of issues with diskspace, but now have 18 GB available at it does not complain), until the second reboot.

Second reboot (at about 60% of installation): blue screen: page fault in nonpaged sector.
After that it says it will recover the installation, and the install screen continues.
Third reboot (at about 80% of installation): blue screen: apc index mismatch
Again it says it attempts to recover the installation, and starts recovering it.

The update is not applied... Any suggestions on what I can do?


Jörg

[dZeus]

Does not boot from USB, or not from USB flash memory?

how about burning to DVD and connecting a USB DVD drive?

Also, the page fault error sounds bad... may be driver related, but if it's not, there might be something wrong with the target system.

[VJ]

Well, it is an old laptop, which should boot from a USB dvd drive yet it is picky with that and does not boot from mine. Previously, I borrowed a colleague's usb drive, but he's in Belgium and I'm in Poland... However I have done installations on this laptop by setting up a PXE boot server, so having to reboot externally can be achieved if necessary, but I would like to avoid the hassle that comes with it. In emergency though, I can do it that way.

The current installation is a Windows 10 which was updated from Windows 7. As such, there may be still some older drivers (e.g. Realtek AC97 for a AC203 chipset) in the system. Googling around I found that some Dell systems blue screen after login and have this related to the Realtek driver. And they also give the apc_index_mismatch error. So perhaps something changes with the update that makes this software act up... My system now reverted to the state before the anniversary update attempt (so Windows 10) and never blue screens.

I was thinking of just starting an installation from a mounted iso file, and allowing it to reinstall the windows (I have done Windows 10 installations from a mounted iso-file, so I know that that works) rather than just upgrade... But of course it means loosing all installed software and again a day of installing stuff (it is not the fastest of systems )... Perhaps the upgrade from the iso file would work better than the upgrade assistant?

[UtwigMU]

You can extract iso with 7zip and run update from there. It will ask what to keep (user files, software, nothing).

If all fails run clean install from USB or connect DVD-ROM. Problem with installing from USB is that after reboot drives may get enumerated differently and it sometimes won't find the install files where they were before reboot.

[VJ]

It not even necessary to extract the iso: just put it on a different partition and mount it (possible in Windows 10). I decided not to look further and just reinstall Windows that way, even without keeping the apps: it worked without problems.

A second computer also failed the update, and there I tried to do a reinstall with keeping the apps, but that also failed. So I will have to do the same and just reinstall it in the same way. A bit annoying, as I need to reinstall and reconfigure everything, but at least I can get the update. Main reason for me to force the update now is to prevent the machines from slowing down when downloading the update (both are quite low powered machines) and not to have issues when they suddenly decide to update.

Not sure if it is connected, but both my machines that failed were updated from Windows 7. The one machine I have that had a new Windows 10 installation had no issues with the update. Apart from the fact that Microsoft sets back a number of settings (e.g. fastboot) which I had changed. Enabling fastboot prevents WOL on that computer, so quite annoying that they disable such settings: if I would not have physical access to the computer, I would have an issue...

[VJ]

A third computer had no issues with an update from the iso file (keeping apps and settings).

Today, the laptop booted with a bluescreen APC_INDEX_MISMATCH... Now I need to figure out why it does that... First guesses are with fastboot, as some things have changed there (2 pc's behaved differently when fastboot was enabled on the previous windows version).

EDIT: the rebooting laptop is showing big problems: after 3 consecutive blue screens it gives me a trouble shooting menu. I can boot in safe mode, and figured to try and reinstall Windows. But the installer tells me that "this pc cannot run Windows 10". It was running it for a few months now, even was running the anniversary update!!
I suspect it is caused by something I installed, so now I tried a reset of the Windows (one of the troubleshooting options).

I really hope I don't have to get the pxe-boot server out for this one: the pc I used for the pxe boot also has update problems and I would first need to fix that one...

[VJ]

To my surprise, I managed to find a usb drive from which the laptop boots: it is a usb-CF card adapter. Of course, with my luck, the media creation tool for Windows 10 did not consider it a usb storage, so I had to use a different tool to make a bootable usb disk from an iso file. But it worked! So I reinstalled windows on the laptop, clean install not keeping anything.

Hopefully, the bluescreen stays away now......

[cjolley]

I'm trying to update my laptop...

It may just not be compatible (yet?)
Two of our laptops aren't offered the Anniversary Update in windows update. One Toshiba and one Lenovo.
I suspect the drivers aren't ready yet.

PS What processor does it have? Windows 10 requires PAE. A first for MS.

[VJ]

It is an Intel Pentium M 753 ULV, but as Windows 10 installs, it means it is supported (otherwise an error is shown upon install). The clean install worked, so now everything looks fine. I'm sure there are no legacy drivers and it found all the drivers automatically. No idea why in safe mode it said that it cannot run Windows 10, while it was running Windows 10...

The second system, an Intel Atom 330 on Ion chipset also had problems updating, so I also performed a clean install. Also here no problems.

I guess the lesson for me is not to trust the rolling updates too much. At least the next big updates are scheduled for 2017, so we should be ok for now...

[cjolley]

At least the next big updates are scheduled for 2017, so we should be ok for now...

But there will be two of them. Just to keep us on our toes I guess.

[VJ]

yes...

But... likely culprit found (and one system again messed up).

Symantec Workspace Virtualization. When I install that one, I again get the apc index mismatch bluescreen. Problem is that it refuses to uninstall in safemode (throws an error) and that disabling the services does not allow the system to boot normally. Stupid me did not make a restore point, So I'm back to having to reinstall one system. If only it would boot once, I could start the install from the isofile that resides on its second partition....

[UtwigMU]

For installing Windows you don't need special tools.

You need to:
- format drive in NTFS
- make partition active (CMD > diskpart > list disk > select disk > list partition > select partition > active partition - you can use help for more details i'm typing out of memory)
- extract .iso to partition you created
- boot from drive

[VJ]

I did not know that... I used a tool to make a bootable usb disk from the iso file.

Good to know!
Thanks.

[Jammrock]

If you have a UEFI instead of a BIOS you may need to format in FAT32. UEFI doesn't speak NTFS.