Update from 1803-1903 Fails 32GB Machine

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I am attempting to update from 1803 to 1903 on a minimum (32GB) Acer laptop and getting failure.  The process is identical to that previous used successfully.  On a minimum machine, connect a USB expander.  One USB contains the Windows bootable source, the other a blank 16 GB stick for scratch files.  Boot the machine, run setup from the bootable USB, inform setup to use the empty scratch USB.  Allow setup to run.  For previous updates the process takes ~ 1 hour or so, eventually installing the update.

Alas, not for 1903.  It goes all the way to the full blue area with 1% completed and stays there.  No progress for several hours.  Eventually it reboots, uninstalls whatever it has done, reboots back to 1803.  Obviously setup found it couldn’t proceed but there are no entries in the events files to indicate the issue.

Perhaps it can’t be done on this machine.  I did some research that suggests trying https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/upgrade/setupdiag to identify why setup can’t complete.

Have others been successful?  Any tips other than the setupdiag tool?

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Try creating a Windows 10 Update log

https://winaero.com/blog/find-windows-update-log-windows-10/

[Moderator edit] Alex, please don’t quote the entire post for a one line answer. In this case no quote is required at all.

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Indeed there is a log found tucked away.  It shows that various updates were successful but those were updates for 1803.  Apparently once I revert to running setup from the USB, the main log isn’t used, nor does the applications log reflect activity.  So the internal log appears to track what is downloaded and installed, but not what setup was doing.  The update window does report that 1903 update was unsuccessful, so main Windows indeed is aware, but doesn’t say why.

Time for me to learn about setupdiag <sigh>.

 

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[MrJimPhelps]

Try connecting an external USB hard drive rather than a USB flash drive. Hopefully a hard drive will work better than a flash drive.

If you can upgrade to a bigger internal drive (minimum 128 GB), then you won’t likely have this problem in the future.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by MrJimPhelps.

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[hhodges]

Understand.  I use a USB expander with a blank stick for the temp files (12G required) and the Win1909 setup files on a second stick.  Previous updates have been done OK.  The Acer minimal machine has 32G soldered memory for storage and 2G user memory.  Could be using a USB physical device might be a way at least to try.  I’ll dig into my drive box for one of those set aside drives.

I could run setupdiag which fetches more details from the setup operation, but it simply shows failure without any of the pre-canned Windows fail database info.  It does have some diagnostic data that perhaps Windows Microsoft folk might interpret, given my odd configuration.

In studying Windows Setup there are some switches that I might attempt to force a verbose dialog onto a separate drive to see what they are doing.  I was unaware that Windows has a compact mode where it can operate from compressed files on the target machine.

More to learn before I assign the bitty box to the recycle bin.  Spending this much effort on a $200 device seems to approach the ‘not worth the effort’ place except as a technical challenge for we would-be sleuths.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by hhodges.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by PKCano.

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those specific Acer “minimal” machines with built-in 32Gb storage devices are definitely “junk”
look for something better from a different brand like Asus, Dell, HP or Lenovo and buy a new device that cost at least $500 and has at least 128Gb of storage space

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More to learn before I assign the bitty box to the recycle bin. Spending this much effort on a $200 device seems to approach the ‘not worth the effort’ place except as a technical challenge for we would-be sleuths.

heck no! you could still use it for a linux distro to learn on and play around with 😉

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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Well I could finally get 1909 installed by installing directly over the previous install – semi-clean.  But the effort was mostly for show.  Seems Linux is about the only future for the machine.  After 1909 hardly any room left for user profiles, even the pointers to a SD card expansion that likes to periodically drop away and return in some checking cycle.

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