Upgrade failed

Hi all,

In an attempt to beat the deadline, I have been trying to update my laptop.

The W10Update icon in the system now says that my laptop is not compatible ("Unfortunately this PC is not able to run Windows 10"), it invites me to click on the link to the compatibility report- which says that "You're good to go".

For the record it is a 2010 Sony Vaio Z11- i7, 6Gb RAM, 256Gb SSD (RAID with more than 20Gb free), running Windows 7

Out of desperation, I went to the direct MS link

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softw...load/windows10

It downloaded and installed W10 and then eventually presented me with a DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE and said that it would find a solution and then automatically reboot. After an hour or so I got bored and just hit the power button.

I then turned it back on, I was presented with the w10 splash screen and the spinning circle of dots, after about another 30 minutes, I grew bored again and did a long power button press, this time on reboot it reverted back to W7.

I can only imagine that the primary problem is the fact that the laptop has both a NVIDA card and Intel graphics.

From what I have read it is possible to upgrade this laptop via BIOS hacks and 3rd party (community based) NVIDA drivers.

Time is a bit precious at the moment, and yes, I know that I should have tried to update before now, but, is the new (free) serial number likely to reside anywhere on my PC.? I'd like to make a note of it and then try to upgrade again in about 5 days., or is there another way of securing the free serial (perhaps via a virtual installation?

Tnx

imaginarynumber said:

Time is a bit precious at the moment, and yes, I know that I should have tried to update before now, but, is the new (free) serial number likely to reside anywhere on my PC.? I'd like to make a note of it and then try to upgrade again in about 5 days., or is there another way of securing the free serial (perhaps via a virtual installation?

No it won't be on your PC. The activation process logs details of your hardware (motherboard etc.) and stores it in a Microsoft server somewhere.

Once it's activated successfully on a computer, then if at some future date someone installs Windows again on that computer, it 'phones home' to see if the hardware is recognised on the activation server, and activates accordingly. If the hardware has changed slightly it may also recognise it, but a new motherboard is seen as a more major change.

Must admit I don't know how to get past the Vaio issue though... I've read that they're troublesome with Win10. Do you have a backup image of the disk? If so a clean install might be a possible way to go, either using this technique, or by entering your Windows 7 product key during the install process.

DavidY said:

No it won't be on your PC. The activation process logs details of your hardware (motherboard etc.) and stores it in a Microsoft server somewhere.

Once it's activated successfully on a computer, then if at some future date someone installs Windows again on that computer, it 'phones home' to see if the hardware is recognised on the activation server, and activates accordingly. If the hardware has changed slightly it may also recognise it, but a new motherboard is seen as a more major change.

Must admit I don't know how to get past the Vaio issue though... I've read that they're troublesome with Win10. Do you have a backup image of the disk? If so a clean install might be a possible way to go, either using this technique, or by entering your Windows 7 product key during the install process.

Thanks David, I appreciate your reply. I guess that I will put things on the back-burner for now and then when I have more spare time, look into the matter again.

imaginarynumber said:

Thanks David, I appreciate your reply. I guess that I will put things on the back-burner for now and then when I have more spare time, look into the matter again.

The urgency is that the upgrade is no longer free after 11am UK time today. So if you don't get it to activate in the next 2 hours 45 mins (at time of writing) then you'd have to pay if you did want Windows 10. (Unless, when you first tried installing, it got as far as activating and 'phoning home' your hardware details to Microsoft, in which case you've plenty of time.)
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows

DavidY said:

The urgency is that the upgrade is no longer free after 11am UK time today. So if you don't get it to activate in the next 2 hours 45 mins (at time of writing) then you'd have to pay if you did want Windows 10. (Unless, when you first tried installing, it got as far as activating and 'phoning home' your hardware details to Microsoft, in which case you've plenty of time.)
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows

Yep, unfortunately I have missed the free offer. My bad for leaving it until the 11th hour, and for believing the compatibility report :-(

I have a friend that works for MS, so I guess that at some point I will ask him to buy me a copy (via the generous staff discount).

Am just hoping that at some point soon the "Get Windows 10" icon will eff off, oh, and that WUAUSERV will now stop taking up 25% of my CPU cycles (presumably because it was so excited about pushing me into the arms of W10- at one stage I had to disable it in services.msc).

It's not a biggie though, I like W7 and only wanted to upgrade to W10 because I am a W10 Mobile user.

Once again, thanks for your advice and assistance..