win 8.1 to Win 10 upgrades gets stuck at getting updates

My Dad gave me his lenovo g50-30 - it wouldn't boot (stuck at the circles !) - He reckoned he had windows 10 running on it very slowly and thing like wifi weren't reliable.

Anyway I did a lenovo factory reset to win 8.1 - and then tried to upgrade to win 10 via the media creation tool (upgrade this pc)

All was going well and I got past 'windows is creating your media' - then it got stuck at getting updates. I left if for 6 hours - still at getting updates. I did another factory reset and tried with an ethernet cable - same results.

Also after it failed the last time - after if I clicked cancel it went to 'clean up' and then 3 hours later it was still cleaning up !

Any ideas what might be wrong - or how I can upgrade this to windows 10 ?

I really don't want to wipe and install win 10 as my dad doesn't want to loose the on touch recovery partition on this laptop

I would recommend download the ISO file, I prefer option 1 below:
Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Tutorials

Disconnect the computer from all sources of internet.

Mount the ISO file. Windows 8.1 has mounting built-in right from file explorer.

Run setup.exe from the mounted ISO file to do the upgrade with the computer disconnected from all sources of internet.

NavyLCDR said:

I would recommend download the ISO file, I prefer option 1 below:
Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Tutorials

Disconnect the computer from all sources of internet.

Mount the ISO file. Windows 8.1 has mounting built-in right from file explorer.

Run setup.exe from the mounted ISO file to do the upgrade with the computer disconnected from all sources of internet.

Yes but I will then loose the lenovo recovery partition ?

kingrollo said:

Yes but I will then loose the lenovo recovery partition ?

There is that chance with any upgrade, but running setup.exe from the mounted ISO file is no different than running it from any other method of upgrading, except that you have the ISO file downloaded permanently in a convenient manner to use multiple times if the upgrade keeps failing as you attempt to fix the problem. Any method of running Windows 10 setup.exe from within Windows 7/8/8.1 will start the same upgrade process. You have to actually boot from a Windows 10 installation media such as USB flash drive or DVD to do a clean install which is guaranteed to break the recovery partition.

If you want to 99% guarantee recovery to factory software ability, then create a backup image of the hard drive with an imaging program like Macrium Reflect Free. You will need an external storage location like an external hard drive or network attached storage to hold the image that will be about 80% in size of the used space on the hard drive. Then you could even do a clean install of Windows 10 and still be able to go back to the saved image.

NavyLCDR said:

There is that chance with any upgrade, but running setup.exe from the mounted ISO file is no different than running it from any other method of upgrading, except that you have the ISO file downloaded permanently in a convenient manner to use multiple times if the upgrade keeps failing as you attempt to fix the problem. Any method of running Windows 10 setup.exe from within Windows 7/8/8.1 will start the same upgrade process. You have to actually boot from a Windows 10 installation media such as USB flash drive or DVD to do a clean install which is guaranteed to break the recovery partition.

If you want to 99% guarantee recovery to factory software ability, then create a backup image of the hard drive with an imaging program like Macrium Reflect Free. You will need an external storage location like an external hard drive or network attached storage to hold the image that will be about 80% in size of the used space on the hard drive. Then you could even do a clean install of Windows 10 and still be able to go back to the saved image.

OK -Put a new hard drive in - installed win 10 64 bit from a usb stick - no problem at all. Tried to update to anniversary edition - updates stuck at 82%
tried to do an inplaced upgrade using the media creation tool - al went fine - even got as far as selecting the country etc - then it rebooted and got stuck at the wheel of dots ......any idea whats wrong ?

kingrollo said:

OK -Put a new hard drive in - installed win 10 64 bit from a usb stick - no problem at all. Tried to update to anniversary edition - updates stuck at 82%
tried to do an inplaced upgrade using the media creation tool - al went fine - even got as far as selecting the country etc - then it rebooted and got stuck at the wheel of dots ......any idea whats wrong ?

If you installed Windows 10 onto a new hard drive from a USB stick, why did you install an older version of Windows 10 and then update to the anniversary edition? Why didn't you just install the most recent Windows 10 available to begin with?

NavyLCDR said:

If you installed Windows 10 onto a new hard drive from a USB stick, why did you install an older version of Windows 10 and then update to the anniversary edition? Why didn't you just install the most recent Windows 10 available to begin with?

I didn't get a choice ? - I downloaded win 10 64 bit via the media creation tool .

I then ran windows update - and it told me update 1607 was available (which I thought was the anniversary update?)

So I then ran MCT - and selected upgrade this PC - which went all the way through until the reboot.

If there is an ISO with the anniversary update on it - that might come in handy ?

kingrollo said:

I didn't get a choice ? - I downloaded win 10 64 bit via the media creation tool .

I then ran windows update - and it told me update 1607 was available (which I thought was the anniversary update?)

So I then ran MCT - and selected upgrade this PC - which went all the way through until the reboot.

If there is an ISO with the anniversary update on it - that might come in handy ?

The most recent MCT will download the anniversary update. If you run a previously downloaded older version of the MCT, it will continue to download the Windows 10 build that it did at the time you downloaded it.

Here's how to get the Anniversary Update ISO file, but if you choose the MCT, be advised that you have to use the freshly downloaded MCT and not an older out-of-date one:
Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Tutorials

NavyLCDR said:

The most recent MCT will download the anniversary update. If you run a previously downloaded older version of the MCT, it will continue to download the Windows 10 build that it did at the time you downloaded it.

Here's how to get the Anniversary Update ISO file, but if you choose the MCT, be advised that you have to use the freshly downloaded MCT and not an older out-of-date one:
Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Tutorials

nope I did the whole lot from fresh - so from what you are saying I had the anniversary update ?

By then why was 1607 update still available for download !

It is probably the cumulative update from 14393.0 to 14393.479.