Problems upgrading old laptop from 1607 to 1703

I have an acer travelmate 2423 (XP era) that cannot upgrade since 1511, cannot clean install using the standard setup, but can run more recent Windows 10 builds from USB HDDs created on other machines, or can be installed using DISM or IMAGEX to apply the image to the drive.

I see it this way - The WinPE during setup uses limited graphics and during the first part of setup tries to use networking to update drivers, so whatever interrupts WinPE is using to drive graphics and network devices are not available to the Windows 10 under installation, so they are set to share interrupts with other devices, worse, the drivers are generic Microsoft ones. These very cut-back laptop BIOSes are likely to be very old, and not very good on the plug'n'play front, especially dealing with not very flexible hardware, ill-fitting device drivers and, increasing demand for memory being given to graphics in Windows 10.

Windows 8 PE set aside 256MB for Video memory, Windows 10PE dedicates 1GB of Video memory.

When you get to the OOBE phase of setup, WinPE has finished and the new Windows installation is in charge of finishing the setup process, but devices are conflicting, system interrupts are using a lot of processor cycles, and everything slows up as the processors, that is both the GPU and CPU, often on the same chip die get hot through running excessive cycles and may get throttled back, slowing everything down until errors cannot be handled and the setup fails.

Instead of stopping dead, and leaving all the evidence on disk, Setup neatly rolls back to the previous build, wiping out all evidence of the failure.

These failures are not being reported by telemetry ('cos your laptop's network's broken), and your old laptops certainly are not on the test benches at the development labs at Redmond.

So one way may be to try a proxy machine to do the upgrade - take the disk out of the laptop, get it running in a desktop and perform the upgrade there, then return it to the laptop, and let it find all the old drivers that way. This may not be so easy if the laptop has a 2.5" IDE drive, unlikely to have an adapter for that size disk, and you can't upgrade on a USB connected drive. You could clone the laptop system, upgrade it and clone it back.

If you can't upgrade that way, a clean install is next, but like mine, it may not be possible using the standard setup disk or USB, so apply the image to a clean partition with Dism or Imagex, and boot with bcdboot. Then let windows sort out the drivers and their memory allocation during the first part of the OOBE - since no WinPE is running, there is no conflicting demand on the devices or resources.

In the normal course of things, telemetry happens after the event - like when the BSOD collects a load of data to phone home before restarting your machine. In theory, the rollback should be bundling together a load of stuff and should ask you if its ok to send that off home, giving you an idea of how many hundred MB it will be sending back, and you should typically ok it, or cancel it and get back to work.

It does not have to send it there and then - at your convenience would be best.

There's little evidence that such a thing is taking place, and certainly nothing to alert the user that the event has been noted.

Any thoughts on the proxy upgrade I mentioned?

By proxy, I mean performing the upgrade with your laptop hard drive (or a clone of it) on a totally different machine - one that has no driver issues. The driverstore on the disk will have your "happily running "1607 drivers in it untouched, and the drivers for the proxy machine will be perhaps updated by Windows setup, but there's no reason to update your laptop drivers. Even here there is no need for an internet link to complete the upgrade.

Then you restore your updated laptop drive, or the updated clone of it to your laptop. Allow the "getting devices ready" and "getting ready" until "lets start" without any internet access, no ethernet and no Wifi - turn off the router for a while if need be. You should be running 1703 with all your old drivers.

Yes David, a VM would be fine. It should have no trouble upgrading. It should lose activation while in the VM, then reactivate back on the laptop.

I shall try this approach with my Travelmate in the next day or two, and report back.