Problems upgrading old laptop from 1607 to 1703

I'm having problems upgrading my old laptop, which was happily running version 1607, to version 1703. Any ideas what I should try next? When I say "old" laptop... it came with XP, but has run Windows 8, 8.1, 10 Preview, and versions of Windows 10 up to 1607.

So far I've tried this:

1. Download the ISO from the Media Creation Toolkit (MCT), mount it within Windows and run Setup within 1607. This seemed to work but when I got it started, it wouldn't connect to the network, either via WiFi or ethernet cable. But no yellow triangles in Device Manager (and all the drivers were working in 1607, as far as I know). I reverted back to 1607, which seemed to complete successfully.
2. Download a fresh installer from the MCT again, this time using the MCT to create a USB, booting from that, deleting the old C: and reserved partitions within Setup, and clean installing. This ends up with circling dots, after the Getting Started message, but it doesn't get to OOBE; the dots keep circling.
3. Take the above installer, extract the WIM file from the ESD with DISM, add some of the trickier drivers (previously saved with DISM) and then put it back to an ESD and run the USB installer again. Same result as (2) (which was better than I expected to be honest, given I'm not sure this is a recommended route- don't try this one at home, kids)

In both (2) and (3), if I press Shift-F10 and try a few commands, I can see there is some sort of running operating system, with System taking most of the CPU, but it never seems to get anywhere.
From (3), running Device Manager from command line again shows no yellow triangles or unknown devices.

I have a Macrium backup of it running 1607, which I can revert to if need be (at least as a medium-term measure; I know 1607 will eventually go out of support), but I don't want to let 1703 beat me! And I really don't want to revert to Windows 8.1, which seemingly will be supported longer.

Any suggestions on what to try next?

Tell us about your hardware. (Make/model, at least.) If it needs drivers, that will help locate them.

bobkn said:

Tell us about your hardware. (Make/model, at least.) If it needs drivers, that will help locate them.

It's an Acer Aspire 5633.
I haven't found recent drivers on the Acer website, but using the drivers which it had with 1607, I can't see anything obviously missing in Device Manager.

dalchina said:

Can you gain anything by using the troubleshooter (e.g. rt click tray icon) or using just the relevant repair in Tweaking.com's free cautious repair tool?

Possibly. Although I'll need to get it going again first, clean install seemingly isn't getting to a normal running installation.

Unless there are command-line methods of running those tools which I might be able to run?

RoadBlaster said:

According to the specs of your Acer Aspire 5633 it has 1GB of DDR2 ram !

How much ram do you have ?

Ah yes I did upgrade it to 4GB at some point.
(Although 1GB is in theory enough for 32-bit Windows 10, which is all I'm trying to run on it.)

dalchina said:

As the clean install is failing, I would check the disk first (basic) e.g. using Kyhi's boot DVD/flash drive from the top of the software and apps section here (Win 10 environment) and run HDtune which is on the disk.

Then for a failed installation you could have a look at the logs.

Where do I find logs after a clean install?
My suspicion is that the disk is OK because it ran 1607 OK when I reverted it. Plus creating the Macrium image (in fact 2, as I have an image of the non-working 1703 upgrade too) didn't cause any errors to show.

But I'll check up with those tools later/over the weekend.