Installation hung on 'Just a Moment'

How many hard drives do you have on the system there? This is going to have to be My Standard Question to ask each time someone reports a problem trying to upgrade to 10! I went through a full day of headaches back on July 29th trying to figure out why the heck 10 simply could not or would not finish the first upgrade first trying it over a clone of 7 on the then second OS drive waiting for any OS! And after seeing a complete fresh install of 7 on a brand new primary partition following a complete wipe of the drive still a No Go???

Wanting to first get into 10 blindly by intent to see just what others would run into I learned a fast lesson when then going to look over first the Clean Install guide here at Ten F and afterwards checking on what was seen in the Upgrade Install guide as well for what I had been missing! That was the need to unplug any "non OS" storage and back up type drives before the planned dual boot with 7!

Now if you are looking to save some time as well as forget about the initial upgrade over 7 to simply see 10 go and activated automatically there is another option available as of late you can turn to in a 3rd guide recently posted! I plan to be using this option along with keeping the necessary file on the 4 in 1 10 media project someone found another solution for. Look this one over carefully as well as be sure to pull the data cable off any secondary hard drives before your next attempt! Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First - Windows 10 Forums

Ok the next thing you will want to do would be going into the Folder options seen in File Explorer or previously Windows Explorer and once that screen comes up open the View tab and uncheck the hide all protected system files option. If you don't already have everything set to view this will reveal the boot files as well as the "$Windows~BT" and on the 64bit Windows the "$Windows~WS" folders at the root of C. Those are temp installation folders the 10 installer creates. You may also see a "found.000" folder that is safe to remove while you may have to take ownership over them.

The setup files for upgrading will be found in "C:\$Windows~WS\Sources|Windows" where you can simply double click on the setup.exe file itself to see the installer start up. The actual "Quick and Easy" solution? would be backing everything and anything you want to keep from the main drive itself since you do have the external drive for storage and backup available and prepare to wipe the C drive clean! That could mean nuking the partitions off of it completely especially if you have already seen to creating a full system image backup of the drive itself before attempting this!

If the system is an OEM premade with a warranty still in effect this next step will void that immediately while having a system image made of the drive will allow you to restore it to the way it is now before a complete wipe takes place. If you are not worried any about that then you would simply boot live with the external drive already being unplugged to the command prompt option found in the live media which could be the 7 recovery media if it has that option or the new 10 usb or dvd media you created in order to use the "Clean" or "Clean All" command once you have started up the DiskPart tool and have correctly selected the main drive. The clean all command will nuke everything on every drive at the same time being the total system wipe option there but will insure the drive gets cleaned!

From there you can then proceed to follow the clean install guide's instructions. Note that to use the option seen in the last guide you will need to see that done now before proceeding any further to preserver the 7 activation ticket you will need for the 10 install later. Review the clean install carefully in case the UEFI is getting in the way as well.

I think you are need of a major OS overhaul! The present copy of 10 is simply too buggy to work with! I saw this with the initial upgrade attempts where the 10 installer didn't where to put things and what you are seeing is 10 simply not knowing what to load first!

If the upgrade saw activation or not won't matter now any as you can simply slap a clean install on at this time and call it a day rather trying to resolve what apparently is a typically doomed upgrade install. After the upgrade on the laptop being the 3rd machine to see a 10 upgrade I ended up having to see 3 consecutive clean installs in row with the first to verify the activation of the upgrade would apply to the clean install on the OEM machine, the second to swap over from the 32bit to 64bit Windows, and the last when I wasn't able to shrink the OEM OS primary after removing the other 300mb and 400mb partitions no longer needed.

If you want to see that done you do by simply by choosing the Custom option when booted live without seeing a reformat or nuke of the entire drive your user account files as well as program folders will tucked away in the next Windows.old folder. The 10 installer will then simply replace the MS folders with new ones.
(PerfLogs, Program Files, Program Files(x86) seen on the 64bit only, ProgramData, users)

Then you have no problem with the suggestion for seeing the drive turned into "unallocated drive space" with a total wipe. Once the drive is cleaned off of all traces and potential lingering clutter that could gum things up a little the next step will be the second clean install attempt on the then "Raw" drive to see the new primary made up unless opting to use an alternative drive partitioning program ahead of time to avoid the System Reserved partition from being created.

If the drive itself is in good health being another possible item of interest on any older system you should be able to slap a fast 10 install on without problems except for any potential driver issues if the board itself lacks any 8 or 8.1 updates! And there's the catch all for you! First you will want to look the make and model board up and see what updates were last seen available for it. If it got upto 8 or 8.1 64bit in the list of OSs you shouldn't run into any compatibility issues and 10 should go right on. But follow the steps provided in the Clean Install guide there!

You likely are not seeing any UEFI problem if the board came out prior to that being introduced. The boards on the two desktops here were out back in 2010 being AM3 socket and have been doing well so far knowing 10 slapped some 8.1 x64 drivers on since none are seen for 10. If any are to be seen it usually takes a while for the support sites to be updated.

When going to install you have a drive running 7 plugged into a usb port at the same time? That will toss a monkey wrench into the works fast enough! Now I know precisely why you are running into problems!

The only thing besides the keyboard and mouse and a printer if you have one you want plugged when booting live from the 10 media is the 10 media. Otherwise you run into interference which is what you are likely seeing there from having the drive with 7 running in an external enclosure! Windows can't be installed by way of usb and this is where the 10 installer is detecting the 7 install but by way of usb and hanging up on you!

If you still want to run 7 but not set up a dual boot with 10 the old F12 key option works for simply selecting the drive to boot from for a one time session each time. And if 7 was installed while the drive was in that case simply toss it back in.

To void seeing the 10 installer create a boot entry for 7 which is also easy to remove later you simply unplug the data cable before booting live with either the flash drive or dvd media you saw made up. Or you can work with a 10/7 Dual Boot easily enough while having the 10 drive set as the host/boot drive in the bios advanced options.

Here I simply kept the original 7 drive intact by first cloning and later nuking the second OS drive entirely for a clean install of 7 and SP1 for the first upgrade replaced by the clean install later and seeing that drive set as default in the bios before adding a new entry for 7 into the 10 BCD. Then I simply replugged the former 7 host/boot drive back in seeing that become the second OS drive.