1803 update has been failing since May 2018

asus2016 · 09 Dec 2018

Caledon Ken said:

Basically you create ISO, navigate to it and run setup. Always recommend making a backup of your data as stuff happens. The process is supposed to be non-destructive. There are two recommended BIOS settings in tutorial.

Two more questions:

Where should I put the ISO? I assume not on my C partition? May it go on my D partition on the same disk?
If doing an "upgrade" (only purpose is to put 1803 on the computer), will the steps 14-17 from the tutorial apply? These are essentially related to signing on for the first time.

Caledon Ken · 09 Dec 2018

You can put it on D: if you wish. Right click and mount it, then run setup. When I said navigate I assumed incorrectly you would make DVD.

14-17 still apply, 14 is you can now sign in. Assuming this update works then it will act like a feature update with getting things ready messages.

Don't think you mentioned what AV you are running. If anything other than Defender please uninstall it.

zbook · 09 Dec 2018

When available please update the progress with the steps in post #7.

Steve C · 10 Dec 2018

asus2016 said:

Two more questions:

Where should I put the ISO? I assume not on my C partition? May it go on my D partition on the same disk?
If doing an "upgrade" (only purpose is to put 1803 on the computer), will the steps 14-17 from the tutorial apply? These are essentially related to signing on for the first time.

It doesn't matter where you put the ISO file. You need to mount it as a virtual drive to run the setup.exe file which will copy the installation files to a temporary location on drive C: anyway.

asus2016 · 10 Dec 2018

When a problem solution starts to "bleed out" to being many branches, and involving an upgrade or reinstall of Windows, I punt it to a trusted local repair shop.

I do always ask for a "teach me to fish" accounting of what they did, so I'll report back when it's done, presumably later this week.

asus2016 · 15 Dec 2018

asus2016 said:

When a problem solution starts to "bleed out" to being many branches, and involving an upgrade or reinstall of Windows, I punt it to a trusted local repair shop.

I do always ask for a "teach me to fish" accounting of what they did, so I'll report back when it's done, presumably later this week.

Update: Problem is not solved yet. The shop started work on it late this past week, doing much of what I'd done. The update keeps failing as it had for me, 50-60% of the way through installation.

They removed AVG free antivirus (I will be going with Windows Defender moving forward) and Malwarebytes, and went with the in-place install of 1803, and still the same problem.

Both C and D partition of the hard drive have 100+ free gigs of space.

They're mystified, and these aren't shabby novices. So will continue to tilt at it next week, and I will report back when I have more.

Callender · 15 Dec 2018

FYI: worth a try.

Windows update is stuck - Page 2 - Windows 10 Forums

Or if not wishing to disconnect from internet run script in safe mode.

Edit: Also consider checking for missing updates using Dism++

Download Dism++ - MajorGeeks

dalchina · 16 Dec 2018

I've just upgraded from 1709 to 1809 - it took me about 3 attempts. Windows update had been working perfectly normally.

Taking an MVP's advice to ignore the (very obscure) error logs, this is what I did:

a. Ran Windows update troubleshooter
b. Followed this tutorial
Reset Windows Update in Windows 10 | Tutorials
c. Disabled my security programs
d. Uninstalled one progam that modifies my GUI that I know interferes with upgrading
e. Performed the upgrade manually (downloaded iso, ran setup.exe
f. Chose not to accept updates as part of the upgrade

Success.

Caledon Ken · 16 Dec 2018

@asus2016

I think if this were me at this point I would clean install. I know it is more work, no argument there, but your go forward foundation will be so much better.

It could even be cheaper, clean install takes an hour (yes it goes faster or slower depending on your machine), install a couple of your more critical programs and build out as need arises.

Thanks for the update and Good luck.

asus2016 · 18 Dec 2018

Well, this didn't really "solve" the problem, in that the shop never found what was causing it.

But they did a clean 1809 install, and things seem to be running smoothly.

One oddity that they noticed, that maybe might have explained things - or not.

The computer had a windows.old folder on it. This computer has never had anything but Windows 10 on it - not sure if Windows.old can be created with new 10 installs or not.

After the 1809 was installed, the shop was getting a "Welcome to Windows 10" splash message, as if a first time login, every time they logged in. They deleted the Windows.old folder, and normal "expected" behavior resumed.

The updating history of the computer is kind of weird.

It probably came with 1511 installed on it when we purchased it new in July 2016.

It repeatedly failed the update to 1709 through normal Windows update, then my manual attempts to do so, and the shop did an in-place upgrade to that in January 2018.

And then the 1803 failed through Windows update starting in May of this year, and failed my manual attempts, and those of the shop, so a clean install had to be done.

Hopefully it now has the robustness to properly handle new releases.

So I'm marking it solved, although questions remain.