I can't boot from any media to do the clean install

Thanks to all for your help. Sadly, I've given up for the time being trying to install Windows 10 64 bit on this old PC. All upgrade routes fail at the same point when the installer does the first reboot. I even tried restoring a Reflect Image of my laptop's W10 64 bit clean install to the old PC using Reflect Fix Boot and Redeploy functions but that failed too at the same point! I suspect there is a basic BIOS or driver / hardware incompatibility with 64 bit Windows.

Anyway, Reflect has restored the 32 bit installation I did last week so I'll just use that.

Steve C said:

I even tried restoring a Reflect Image of my laptop's W10 64 bit clean install to the old PC using Reflect Fix Boot and Redeploy functions but that failed too at the same point!

That's what I doubted, it fails due the same reason your clean installs fail at device configuration phase

Kari said:

Deploying to dissimilar hardware will do the second phase of Windows setup, removing old hardware drivers and replacing them with new ones. Basically the same will happen than what happens in setup after first restart, devices will be configured.

If it was me, I would do one more test as I told in my previous post. Install W8.1 x64, let it update, capture and export drivers, inject those drivers to W10 x64 install.wim, make new install media based on that (DVD or USB) and try clean install.

Steve C said:

I'll try that in a while!

I have my doubts for that, too, but I can't think of anything else you haven't tried already. Theoretically, it would bypass the phase of setup where you have issues, device configuration, because all device drivers would already be in place.