Windows 10 Preview 14905 -expired -on fast

cswilson said:

thanks totally missed that

You're welcome, me too, or I would have added that tidbit to the original post, sorry.
That's why it took me a bit to respond.

cswilson said:

its an older version from the downloads, 14393 whereas im at 14905

That's the only source I know of.
I guess they haven't updated it in a while.

I've asked someone for help on this, it might be a bit until I get the info, or he get's in touch with you.

cswilson said:

yes it is, via a volume license agreement

A volume license means that if you have got it legally, it's from an organisation. In case of Education edition that organisation is most probably a school, university or such. You need to ask their IT department to help you to get a later build, or at least to save your personal documents before starting from scratch and clean installing.

There's not much we can do.

Please do not take this too badly, the following is just my own personal and subjective, really honest opinion: As a hardware tech, an IT pro, you can blame only yourself. Hard to believe a pro lets this happen.

It is and has been quite a while a known fact that older builds will expire now, Microsoft repeatedly posting the warning in release notes of each new build:

(Screenshot from Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14936 for PC and Mobile | Windows Experience Blog )

In your first post you tell us "I have build 14905, and have it set to fast, today was the 1st day in over a month it allowed me to even log in to check that would always get error 0x801901f4.".

You've had a month and a half since release of build 14905 to take care of this issue, for instance if that had happened to me I had immediately after noticing any issues installed Windows 10 Education version 1607 build 14393 on a spare machine, opted in to Fast Ring on that machine and in that way got the latest Insider Fast Ring build upgrade, made an ISO of it and now simply upgraded the problematic machine.

Your 15 TB of media files will not vanish when you start from scratch. Just backup your date before clean installing.

BTW, as far as I know build 14905 is not expired yet? Might be I am wrong, I have to test it, can confirm yes or no in about 20 minutes (installing it now on a Hyper-V vm).

EDIT:

OK, checked, build 14905 is really expired. All expiration dates can be seen here: Windows 10 Insider build expiration dates (thanks Cliff :)).

Code:

Build number        Release date     Expiration         License                    Windows will 
                                                           warnings          expiration                stop booting     
                                                           begin                date                  

14901                    08/11/16                 09/17/16            10/01/16                   10/15/16     
14905                    08/17/16                 09/17/16            10/01/16                   10/15/16     
14915                    08/17/16                 09/17/16            10/01/16                   10/15/16

Windows 10 Insider build expiration dates

There is a way to upgrade without losing files to latest version but takes a bit of patience. Another user followed this and got back up and running.

Install release version of windows 10 education in a virtual machine (no need to activate it),

Join Insider Programme inside vm.

After a couple of days or so it will download the updates to latest Insider version.

When it asks you to upgrade, search for hidden install.esd file and save elsewhere.

Then convert the install.esd file to an iso using

ESD to ISO - Create Bootable ISO from Windows 10 ESD File - Windows 10 Forums

The from the expiring build, double click on iso and run setup.exe.

Obviously you need to do it before 15/10/16 when it stops altogether.