do a repair-install from the builtin admin account?

The forced March upgrade from 1909 to 2004 did damage to my laptop. E.g., UAC blocks when it shouldn't, all updates (even manually) fail, Crypto Services regularly monopolizes my HDD for long periods. Yesterday, just for familiarization, I double-clicked on setup.exe on a Rufus-made USB with a 2004 ISO; the File Explorer window immediately froze, while explorer.exe stopped and wouldn't restart and of course my Taskbar disappeared. (A followup try with setup.exe worked okay.)

So I'm thinking that for the upcoming real repair attempt, I should do the repair-install from the builtin admin. At least that acct doesn't have the interference from UAC, and maybe is free from some other problems as well. This might give better chances of successfully repairing.

Good or bad strategy? Thanks.

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

Code:

You must be signed in as an administrator to do a repair install of Windows 10.

If it fails other options are: (these require the reinstallation of drivers and applications)

Reset Windows 10
Custom Install Windows 10
How to Restore Files from Windows.old Folder in Windows 10
Clean Install Windows 10
Refresh Windows 10

Megahertz said:

If you're running ver 2004 you can only do a repair install of same version.
As you had issues, I suggest you don't use the one you have (Rufus-made USB). Download Ver 2004, mount the iso and run setup.exe. You don't need to use built in administrator. Log in as administrator User and run setup as administrator.
Attached is a all version MCT downloader

Ty, I can use that .bat in future. For now, I'd already downloaded the exact match 19041.1 ISO via HeiDoc. I've used that with Rufus, so the crash was some problem in my damaged Windows.

When UAC wrongly post-update blocks something (e.g. Device Mgr or Disk Mgr and who knows what else), it cannot be unblocked. That's why I think using a regular, corrupted admin account might get thwarted part-way through.

- - - Updated - - -

zbook said:

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

Code:

You must be signed in as an administrator to do a repair install of Windows 10.

If it fails other options are: (these require the reinstallation of drivers and applications)

Reset Windows 10
Custom Install Windows 10
How to Restore Files from Windows.old Folder in Windows 10
Clean Install Windows 10
Refresh Windows 10

Well, there's my TODO list, if the repair fails horribly and I can bring my laptop back to life with Macrium R7 and my System Image I made, post-corrupted-March-update. TY.

dalchina said:

When did you actually upgrade? You can roll back to the previous build within 10 days of upgrading by default, extendable to 60.

How much free space do you have on C: ?

D-Day was March 10th. I did extend to the max via cmd.exe, and also then renamed Windows.old so it won't be deleted anyway. I had tried to copy Windows.old more than once, but at the end of the copying there were always errors ("can't access" or "many files with same name" etc).

My HDD is 1TB with a lot remaining.

But if I roll back, I just put off the problem until MS forces me to update again. I can update with my 2004 ISO, but does rolling back and soon after that updating give any advantage?

Thanks.

Rufus creates two partition on a flash drive - Fat32 and NTFS
Heidoc iso has \sorces\install.wim (huge file)
MCT iso has \sorces\install.esd (high compressed).

I still recommend that you download the iso again (from MCT or Heidoc) but to the computer. Mount the file and run Setup.exe

Megahertz said:

I still recommend that you download the iso again (from MCT or Heidoc) but to the computer. Mount the file and run Setup.exe

The problem is it's a 5GB 11-12 hour download for me, at 1Mbps.

I did the 2004 ISO download to the HDD, then created the USB from that.

I will eventually mount the ISO from the HDD and then setup.exe, but since just about everything has been hitting snags, I want to try to prepare for all eventualities in advance.

Bob1212 said:

The problem is it's a 5GB 11-12 hour download for me, at 1Mbps.

I did the 2004 ISO download to the HDD, then created the USB from that.

I will eventually mount the ISO from the HDD and then setup.exe, but since just about everything has been hitting snags, I want to try to prepare for all eventualities in advance.

Agree.