Problems upgrading old laptop from 1607 to 1703

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  1. Posts : 1,871
    W10 pro x64 20H2 Build 19042.610
       #11

    This sounds very like the issues I encounter with my old Acer 9301. Like you, it came with XP, I got the free Vista upgrade and ran that for many years. Then 8, 8.1 and Ten in various forms.

    Ten is a problem. The installation gets almost to the end and then freezes with the circling dots progressing slowly and jerkily. From that point and if I leave things I can get to a normal desktop but it takes around 5 hours. The problem for me is the Atheros WifI driver that Ten installs by default. It locks the system up with excessive interrupts. Once I have the desktop up I can go into device manager and disable the Atheros driver. That restores normality and I can then install a working driver.

    I run the 32 bit versions on the Acer. The anniversary update seemed to cause lots of disk thrashing and a generally poor user experience, its sluggish. The creators update I have failed to install. I've actually reverted to Vista again on that laptop and it runs like a dream all things considered, so much more snappy than Ten. Its really to old and the lack of driver support is crippling for it.

    If your is an Atheros 5005G (I think thts how it shows in device manager) then I have a 32 bit WifI driver and also an NVidia graphics driver for the GeForce Go 6100 card.
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  2. Posts : 1,524
    Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 16299.15
    Thread Starter
       #12

    Mooly said:
    This sounds very like the issues I encounter with my old Acer 9301. Like you, it came with XP, I got the free Vista upgrade and ran that for many years. Then 8, 8.1 and Ten in various forms.

    Ten is a problem. The installation gets almost to the end and then freezes with the circling dots progressing slowly and jerkily. From that point and if I leave things I can get to a normal desktop but it takes around 5 hours. The problem for me is the Atheros WifI driver that Ten installs by default. It locks the system up with excessive interrupts.
    Thanks for that.
    The "circling dots progressing slowly" sounds very similar to what I'm getting, and it's possible that if I'd not been impatient and left it to run for a few more hours, it would have got to the desktop for me too - that's another thing for me to try.

    How did you identify which driver was causing the excessive interrupts?

    I'm pretty sure the WiFi is Intel and not Atheros on my laptop , but I like the theory that it's a driver issue.

    Mooly said:
    If your is an Atheros 5005G (I think thts how it shows in device manager) then I have a 32 bit WifI driver and also an NVidia graphics driver for the GeForce Go 6100 card.
    Thanks for the kind offer - I'll have a look over the weekend but I'm 99% sure it isn't an Atheros driver on this one.
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  3. Posts : 1,871
    W10 pro x64 20H2 Build 19042.610
       #13

    It was trial and error. Once I could open task manager (and that takes about 5 minutes) I could see it was the interrupts causing the 99% CPU usage that was locking things up.

    From there it was just trial and error although Wi-Fi seemed to be the only driver that got installed.

    You have to be prepared to allow it lots of time to action anything to attempt this. For example make sure that you hold a mouse click for say 2 to 3 seconds to ensure it gets picked up. Then just wait for the action to occur. A couple of minutes or more to even begin to open device manager. Same again to open network adapters and so on. Just do one operation at once and wait.

    I remember now, it stalls at the point it asks you to set up a user name and connect to a network. It timed out on the connecting stage. From then on the 'getting a few things ready' section takes a few hours to complete.

    For me, the latest W10 versions run so poorly on the Acer that I haven't pursued it further. I tried the 64 bit version and that won't install at all although the laptop is x64 capable.

    Good luck :)
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  4. Posts : 1,871
    W10 pro x64 20H2 Build 19042.610
       #14

    One more thing... my Acer has a button for Wi-Fi and I found last time that when it stalled, that if I pressed the button I could significantly speed things up to complete the install. You could see it on the spinning dots. Press the button and they speeded up, press again and they slowed down.

    That happened with the Creators Update, I can't recall noticing that behaviour with the earlier versions.
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  5. Posts : 1,524
    Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 16299.15
    Thread Starter
       #15

    I've made some progress today. The Tweaking.com Repair tool (I couldn't find a 'Cautious Repair' tool?) didn't seem to help much, and if anything left things more broken. It had a lot of error messages.

    However I had some success with using Shift-F10 in the circling dots after a clean install to get a command line and then use Device Manager to try to install different drivers and disabling them. It was clear in this mode that I couldn't easily disable the WiFi or Ethernet drivers - any attempt to do this caused Device Manager to hang on both drivers.

    Through some combination of running a driver installer for the WiFi drivers, and trying to disable the wired ethernet driver (Broadcom 440X 10/100) in Device Manager, I managed to disable the wired ethernet driver. Then lean on the power button to force a shutdown (the shutdown command didn't work) and then reboot, and it started Windows 10 and got to an OOBE screen.

    If I enable the ethernet driver again, it causes problems and I can't then disable it. Both the ethernet and Wifi drivers seem to be built-in to the Windows 10 install image - I don't seem able to remove them with DISM, and I suspect it's their interaction with some new 1703 feature that's the issue.

    This means I have a running machine but I can't use the ethernet cable.

    Windows already seems to be using a more recent driver then latest one I can find on Broadcom's site, although I still wish I knew how to remove the driver it's using and go back to the Broadcom one?
    If I use Uninstall Device in Device manager, then Windows automatically reinstalls it and (what's worse) re-enables it, which jams up the entire system (and I don't know how to escape that situation - Windows only works if this driver is disabled).

    Edit: I forgot to mention - I checked the setup error log, but couldn't see anything obviously wrong. I believe that Setup thinks all is working well and all the drivers are good. Device manager thinks they are good drivers too - however I think they are mistaken!
    Last edited by DavidY; 29 Apr 2017 at 19:41.
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  6. Posts : 42,734
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #16

    didn't seem to help much, and if anything left things more broken
    That tends to suggest you have more things wrong than just a driver.

    I would guess the error messages might offer useful information. They are there to tell you something.

    (cautious - that's just my adjective - it's cautious 'cos of all the preparatory steps that give you ways of reversing any changes)
      My Computers


  7. Posts : 1,871
    W10 pro x64 20H2 Build 19042.610
       #17

    It sounds like you have a lot going on there.

    If you have a driver somewhere then have you tried the 'have disc' method in device manager to force it onto your system.

    Again just going from memory, try disable rather than uninstall and again try and install the driver from that state either by using the drivers self installer or by the 'have disc' method. I know how painful a job this is on my Acer. Around 15 minutes to 90% complete the install and 6 or 7 hours to get to the state of having a workable driver installed.
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  8. Posts : 1,524
    Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 16299.15
    Thread Starter
       #18

    I went onto the Feedback Hub last night to try to report the issue, and noticed other people with that Broadcom 440X driver having the same issues. For instance someone with a Dell was getting the same issue and using the Broadcom driver in 1703 was disabling their WiFi too.

    So it seems to be a more widespread issue with 1703 and that Broadcom 440X driver, which I think it needs a fix from Broadcom (last driver version seems to be from January 2007 so not holding my breath) or Microsoft. As the driver has been stable for the last 10 years I'd suggest Microsoft have broken something and they should fix it.

    With that Repair tool, I did the decidedly un-cautious (incautious?) approach of letting it boot into Safe mode, ticking all the repair options and leaving it running. It completed most of the tests with various messages flashing up and then crashed out with an error message saying the software has stopped working altogether.

    But Windows itself seems to be running OK so far, and as it's a clean install, I haven't found much else wrong with it.

    Having clean installed again and used the command line to disable the Broadcom driver, it is in a working state and seems OK apart from that driver being disabled. I'm going to reinstall my apps and do a Macrium image before doing anything with that driver again. I may try the "Have Disc"option as suggested but as I've made some progress, I want a good backup in place first before I break it again.
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  9. Posts : 1,524
    Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 16299.15
    Thread Starter
       #19

    Now I figured out it's the Broadcom 440x driver, I've been able to find this thread:
    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...3-a64b92445385
    Hello. I am an Engineer in the Windows Networking team. I can confirm that there is a bug in the Creators Update that affects the compatibility with the Broadcom 440x driver. We are working on resolving this until it is resolved. We are looking at putting a upgrade block in place as erpmanila3w suggested.

    Thank you for reporting this! I will keep this thread posted if there are any updates. Meanwhile following the steps mentioned in this thread will work around the issue (if you can call disabling Ethernet a valid workaround) until we have a real fix available.

    If you have any questions please let me know.
    So it looks like Microsoft are onto it.

    I'm going to mark as Solved, as Microsoft are on the case and I suspect there's nothing we can do here until they fix it. I'm guessing any version of that Broadcom driver I find will have the same problem so I'm not going to try other drivers at this stage.
    Last edited by DavidY; 30 Apr 2017 at 05:37.
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  10. Posts : 1,871
    W10 pro x64 20H2 Build 19042.610
       #20

    That's interesting reading (the link as well).

    (Yes, make a backup :) I'm having fun and games at the moment with Creators Update and Edge and not being able to access certain sites quickly... very long story, it could be a WiFi driver issue and/or a router incompatibility)

    That MS are on the case is good, and as yours seems to be a widely reported issue then its likely a fix may get pushed out. I reported the Acer/Atheros issue many times when testing W10 in the early days but it never got fixed.

    Good luck... and thanks for the rep.
      My Computer


 

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