Solution for Failed Windows 10 Update Installation Error 0x80004005

[QUOTE=Steve C;491440]I've finally solved the problem preventing me from updating my Dell Inspiron 7537 laptop from Windows 8.1 Home to Windows 10 as described in https://www.tenforums.com/installatio...at-next-2.html.

The installation was consistently failing at the point where Windows is about to restart for the first time with a grey information window titled "Something has happened" with the information "Windows 10 installation has failed".

I've posted below how to diagnose and repair your PC to enable the Windows 10 installation to proceed. The installation should proceed smoothly once the error is corrected.

Symptoms

1. You are booting in UEFI mode i.e. you have a separate EFI System Partition (ESP) on your system disk.
2. You are updating from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 using the USB install disk, a mounted ISO update image or Windows Update.
3. The installation consistently fails at the point where Windows is about to restart for the first time with a grey information window titled "Something has happened" with the information "Windows 10 installation has failed".
4. The setuperr.log installation error logging file contains error 0x80004005 towards the end of the file and there is an error message referring to "Failed to backup BCD database".
5. The command bcdedit /export <yourfilename> fails with the error "The store export operation has failed. The handle is invalid".

1. Perform a full backup of your Windows system (I recommend Macrium Reflect). Your PC may be unbootable if the repair is not implemented correctly.
2. Boot the computer using the Windows 8 installation bootable DVD. Make sure you boot the media in the same configuration as your UEFI installation.
3. On the ‘Windows Setup’ wizard click on ‘Next’ and click on ‘Repair your computer’.
4. You will then see a blue screen and an option to choose.
5. Click on ‘Troubleshoot’ then click on ‘Advanced Option’ and then click on ‘Command Prompt’.
6. Type these commands on the Command Prompt for UEFI configuration:

• diskpart (opens Disk Partitioning tool)
• select disk 0 (or whichever disk is your system disk)
• list volume (please note the number of the volume that has no drive letter assigned and has FAT32 listed in the FS column, usually the only FAT32 volume/partition)
• select volume x <where x is the number of 100-500 MB FAT32 volume with no drive letter, or with label ESP, EFI or SYSTEM>
• assign letter=Z: (gives drive letter Z: to EFI System Partition)
• list volume (to check drive letter Z: is correctly assigned)
• exit (closes Disk Partitioning tool)
• cd /d Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ (changes current folder in Command Prompt window)
• attrib Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD -h -r -s (removes hidden, read-only and system attributes from BCD folder)
• bootrec /fixboot (writes a new boot sector to the system partition)
• ren Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD BCD.old (renames BCD folder to BCD.old)
• bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-gb /s b: /f ALL (en-gb is for the UK - use your own locale)

QUOTE]
Thanks very much Steve C - This worked for me after everything else failed
Minor correction needed to the last line of step 6: b: should be Z:
bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-gb /s Z: /f ALL
Thanks VERY much Gerry A

I considered posting in a separate thread but on consideration realised that it was this thread that pointed me in the right direction. I too was receiving the 80004005 error.

After multiple attempts to upgrade from Win7 the upgrade process was failing consistently just at the point of the first boot. My system is BIOS not UEFI based. To get into the Windows recovery environment I found that I could use the recovery environment from the Media Creation Tool - although it is better to used the DVD rather than USB for this purpose ( the USB recovery environment assigned different letters to the hidden system and other recovery partitions).

I could not though get Bootrec /fixboot to run correctly . I kept getting a message saying that there was no recognised file system on the volume/partition . Some Googling about this suggested corruptions on the partition. What then worked for me was to run
CHKDSK X: /f /r on each drive replacing X with the drive/partition letter concerned

Sure enough the system partition showed bad sectors and repairs on BOOT.DAT. Checked all the other drives and then re-ran the upgrade to Win10 . Upgraded successfully on the first attempt.
@Steve C , @ivygda - thank you both for your posts - wish I had found them a couple of weeks ago

1. The setuperr.log installation error logging file contains error 0x80004005 towards the end of the file and there is an error message referring to "Failed to backup BCD database".

Solution
The successful solution I implemented is shown below.


I've tried for months to get the Anniversary Update to work after the dreaded 0x80004005 error without success. I did start to suspect the UEFI as root cause and searching for the error and UEFI came back with this note. And it worked first time!
At last. Thanks so much - and indeed: if Microsoft would have given a more informative message, it would have saved you (and me) a lot of time! Thanks again.

deklerkt said:

1. The setuperr.log installation error logging file contains error 0x80004005 towards the end of the file and there is an error message referring to "Failed to backup BCD database".

Solution
The successful solution I implemented is shown below.


I've tried for months to get the Anniversary Update to work after the dreaded 0x80004005 error without success. I did start to suspect the UEFI as root cause and searching for the error and UEFI came back with this note. And it worked first time!
At last. Thanks so much - and indeed: if Microsoft would have given a more informative message, it would have saved you (and me) a lot of time! Thanks again.

I'm pleased my fix worked for you. My laptop still had some issues after upgrading to Windows 10 so I eventually did a clean install & upgraded to a SSD at the same time. However, the fix was useful to get Windows 10 working on the laptop and get the activation / digital entitlement allowing future installations.

Your description was for updating 8.1 to 10. That worked for me. My system failed going to the 1511 build last year (with finally clean installing it) but I was surprised that it also did not want to update to the Anniversary edition for - again - unclear reasons. The only change made was copying the entire system disc from 100 GB SSD to 200 GB. Maybe the UEFI partition wasn't copied correctly causing the less than informative error. But fortunately your fix works for many updates where the BCD file got corrupted.

I had tried Paragon Hard Disc Manager's "Bootmanager" feature to replace the BCD but that did not do the trick - your manual procedure did. I'm very happy with that, so thanks again!

Steve C said:

6. Type these commands on the Command Prompt for UEFI configuration:

• diskpart (opens Disk Partitioning tool)
• select disk 0 (or whichever disk is your system disk)
• list volume (please note the number of the volume that has no drive letter assigned and has FAT32 listed in the FS column, usually the only FAT32 volume/partition)
• select volume x <where x is the number of 100-500 MB FAT32 volume with no drive letter, or with label ESP, EFI or SYSTEM>
• assign letter=Z: (gives drive letter Z: to EFI System Partition)
• list volume (to check drive letter Z: is correctly assigned)
• exit (closes Disk Partitioning tool)
• cd /d Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ (changes current folder in Command Prompt window)
• attrib Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD -h -r -s (removes hidden, read-only and system attributes from BCD folder)
• bootrec /fixboot (writes a new boot sector to the system partition)
• ren Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD BCD.old (renames BCD folder to BCD.old)
• bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-gb /s z: /f ALL (en-gb is for the UK - use your own locale)

How to recreate the system partition boot files

GPT partition style

BCDBoot copies the boot files from the Windows 10 partition to the EFI system partition and creates the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store in the same partition.



MBR partition style

BCDBoot copies the boot files from the Windows 10 partition to the system partition (active partition) on the primary hard drive and creates the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store in the same partition. If the System Reserved partition exists, it is the system partition, if not, the Windows 10 partition is the system partition.



For more info look at post #24 in this thread: https://www.tenforums.com/installati...tml#post901772

When execution of the command line:
bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
results in the error message:
Fehler beim Exportieren des Speichers.
Das System kann die angegebene Datei nicht finden.
Try the execution after adding double quotation marks as follows:
bcdedit /export “C:\BCD_Backup”
instead.

Hi,

I know this is an old thread but will give it a shot. So here's my situation. I have an old X58 system that I had migrated to a NVME M.2 SSD and used clover to boot Windows. The EFI partition is stored on one of my local disk(HDD). Now I am having issues updating Windows 10 from 1809 to 1903. I never had any issues updating to a higher version before except now.

Basically I'm getting this error below and had pointed me to this thread.

The setuperr.log installation error logging file contains error 0x80004005 towards the end of the file and there is an error message referring to "Failed to backup BCD database".

Hopefully someone still checks this post.