Your Device Is not Ready Vs 2004

Bree · 14 Jul 2020

cereberus said:

... I am pretty sure the assertion that an upgrade fails because it cannot write a 5th primary Recovery partition is erroneous.
I am pretty sure, it just does not create one as they are not mission critical.
Instead the winre files are contained in a subfolder on C drive.

I can confirm that. My test machine started life as a Win7 PC with four existing MBR partitions. On upgrading to Win10 Setup cold not create a 5th partition for the recovery partition, so it put the winre.wim in C:\Recovery\WindowsRE instead.

cereberus · 14 Jul 2020

Bree said:

I can confirm that. My test machine started life as a Win7 PC with four existing MBR partitions. On upgrading to Win10 Setup cold not create a 5th partition for the recovery partition, so it put the winre.wim in C:\Recovery\WindowsRE instead.

Yep.

f14tomcat · 15 Jul 2020

cereberus said:

Errrr No.

MBR allows 4 primary partitions and unlike UEFI does not have the hidden MSR partition.

Also, I am pretty sure the assertion that an upgrade fails because it cannot write a 5th primary Recovery partition is erroneous.

I am pretty sure, it just does not create one as they are not mission critical.

Instead the winre files are contained in a subfolder on C drive.

If OP is having an issue, it is for some other reason UNLESS it is an unidentified bug.

Sorry, Martin, my mistake. It happens. To all of us. I could have done without the "Errrr" part, that's just rubbing it in. Again, my apologies for the error. And to the OP. And to all the other Members.

cereberus · 15 Jul 2020

f14tomcat said:

Sorry, Martin, my mistake. It happens. To all of us. I could have done without the "Errrr" part, that's just rubbing it in. Again, my apologies for the error. And to the OP. And to all the other Members.

Apologies. I thought "errr no" was actually a more gentle intro than just diving in head first. I certainly meant no offence. We all make mistakes.

FuturDreamz · 15 Jul 2020

NavyLCDR said:

I would do the clean install.

I'm trying to do a clean istall right now, but Windows 10 refuses to boot from the boot media. I've used evey methind i could think of, but downloading the iso from microsoft then using Rufus to create a EFI installer is supposed to work, but it crashes before I even see the windows logo and goes back to the firmware slashscreen

I did the exact same steps to create and boot a 64-bit Xubuntu USB drive, so it has to be a problem in the bootloader of Windows 2004

eLPuSHeR · 16 Jul 2020

FuturDreamz said:

I'm trying to do a clean istall right now, but Windows 10 refuses to boot from the boot media. I've used evey methind i could think of, but downloading the iso from microsoft then using Rufus to create a EFI installer is supposed to work, but it crashes before I even see the windows logo and goes back to the firmware slashscreen

I did the exact same steps to create and boot a 64-bit Xubuntu USB drive, so it has to be a problem in the bootloader of Windows 2004

Hello.

I have not had any trouble creating Windows bootable USBs using Rufus. When I want to create a hybrid MBR/GPT bootable USB I select it in Rufus but I make sure filesystem is FAT32 (instead of default NTFS). If it is still failing, try a different USB stick.

spapakons · 16 Jul 2020

I also have tried to choose FAT32 to make it boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS, but never worked for both to me. So, you either select UEFI Boot and GPT and let the automatic setting to FAT32, or you select CMS and MBR and let the automatic setting to NTFS to make sure it will boot at the intended mode. It is that simple. Also if you have a 32-bit system you must create a 32-bit only USB. The 32/64 combo ISO has a 64-bit boot loader and doesn't boot on 32-bit CPUs!

Matthew Wai · 16 Jul 2020

I have a FAT32 Windows PE USB device bootable in both UEFI and Legacy. It can be used to install Windows.

NavyLCDR · 16 Jul 2020

Every USB flash drive created with Microsoft Media Creation tool is FAT32 bootable on both legacy BIOS and UEFI systems. I also create my own bootable external drives, partitioned with MBR, a FAT32 system partition marked as active, followed by an NTFS partition for whatever OS. They are also bootable on both legacy BIOS and UEFI systems.

The trick is in the boot files written to the FAT32 partition - they have to be compatible with both legacy BIOS and UEFI.

spapakons · 17 Jul 2020

I haven't tried Microsoft's Media Creation Tool to create the USB. It never worked both ways for me using Rufus. I can either make it boot in BIOS or UEFI, not both.

Anyway, I would like to inform you that I succeeded in upgrading from v1909 to v2004 at my main PC (see my specs).

As I told you, I was blocked due to mixed versions of nVidia components. To make sure that all components have the latest official nVidia graphics driver, 391.35 for GT 600 series, I used the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) utility to completely remove any trace of nVidia driver from my system. Then I ran the setup again to install driver 391.95 Sure enough, all nVidia components were update to the latest driver 391.35 Windows Update could not realize that I had latest drivers and did not give me the option to upgrade to v2004. So I mounted the ISO and ran the Setup from there. Success! I now have upgraded to v2004.

I hope that helps others with similar compatibility issues.