My saga of upgrading from Ver. 1809 to 1903

This is how I managed to update my Win10/64 system from Ver. 1809 to 1903. My system has an Intel 17-8700 CPU with 16 GB RAM and a 128GB Samsung SSD boot drive installed on an ASUS P8Z77-M motherboard. Before attempting the update I made a complete boot drive image backup using Macrium backup.

Here are the steps I took to complete the update:

1. Downloaded 18362.113_amd64_en-us_core_c0340fe5_convert.zip from UUP dump and unzipped it.

2. Ran create_virtual_editions.cmd from the UNZipped directory. This ran for quite a while and created a lot of stuff, one item of which was the ISO file for Win10/64 Ver. 1903. It had a very long name so I renamed it to something shorter.

3. Mounted the ISO and ran setup.exe

4. Got message about "invalied UEFI configuration". Note that my system is a vanilla Win10/64 Home configuration with the standard set of 3 partitions. After ending the stalled installation I now have a 4th one size 776 MB.

5. Google found this page explaining how to switch from MBR to UEFI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ent/mbr-to-gpt. Note that I already thought I had UEFI since my motherboard is only a few moth's old.

6. At command prompt ran MBR2GPT /validate /allowfullOS and got the message everything was OK.

7. Next ran MBR2GPT /convert /allowfullOS and it said the conversion was ok.

8. Re-ran setup.exe from the ISO. It went through several validation steps etc. and then went to the actual installation. It got to 83% and seemed to stall - i let it sit there for about an hour and then clicked Cancel. That seemed to stall also; when I clicked on the window I got the message about "Not responding" so I just ended it.

9. Nothing Google found seemed applicable other than running the Windows Update Troubleshooter. So I got that and ran it.

10 The troubleshooter said I had to reboot. So I did. My reboot option said "Update and restart." So I did that.

11. The reboot said it was running the update but stopped at 13% so I rebooted again. This time I got the Blue Screen saying my system couldn't boot and that I should install my Windows disk and boot from that. The most current Windows DVD I have is 09 Jan 2017 Anniversary Update, so I booted from that.

12. Boot screen said either remove disk & reboot or do clean install. I rebooted and got the message about completing updates. That got to 100% and then my original system came back.

13. Re-ran the troubleshooter. It said it couldn't find the problem.

14. Re-ran setup.exe from the mounted ISO file. It started OK and got to 87% which seemed like a good sign to me. Then it started a series of reboots and finally rebooted with the "Hi" screen and then installed some updates.

15 My system came back OK with my normal wallpaper and startup apps. Winver says I'm on Ver. 1903 Build 18362.113. Disk Manager shows the 4 partitions. My C: drive has a Windows.old directory that's 22.6 GB in size. So it looks like I made it.

I have no idea what the real problems were or what fixed them. CCleaner showed that I have no Restore points, so I made one after turning on System Protection for Drive C:. I'll also make a new Macrium backup and burn the new ISO file to a DVD. I'll delete the Windows.old in a day or 2 after verifying that all my important stuff works OK.

Why sometimes Windows installs and/or updates are a breeze, yet at other times a complete nightmare is the question many enthusiasts have probably asked over the years.
When running insider editions, one has to expect that sometimes it might happen and so shouldn't be too surprised. I can remember countless alpha & beta Windows installs over the last 30 years that have had me cursing and swearing which have made no sense. The joys of it all.