Stuck in a endless loop situation with update 1709

[StefanWin10]

Hi all

This has been going on for a very long time now. I've been on and off with Microsoft support, and they can't provide a solution.

Problem:

- Update 1709 (The "Creators Update") fails during installation. Blue screen during the first steps after the reboot.
- Windows keeps trying to reinstall it. Over and over again.
- This causes me to loose work because of the automatic forced restarts (which can't be disabled - more on that below).

The following solutions have been tried by Microsoft support:

1) Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate AUOptions has been changed from 0x02 to 0x01.
2) The following services have been stopped and disabled: BIT(Background Intelligent Transfer) services, Windows Installer services, Windows Time services, Cryptographic Services, Windows Module Installer, Windows Update services.
3) The update 1709 has been hidden using wushowhide.diagcab
4) Temporary update files have been deleted
5) All third party services have been disabled, except antivirus, using msconfig

Nothing helped. I've wasted nearly 10 hours total working with the support folks through four different people in four different sessions with remote support - apparently they simply don't know how to do this.

I have attached a screenshot of the tool that now keeps popping up and forces update 1709 to be installed. As you can see, there is no option to cancel or skip it (which is part of the frustration with this stuff). The only thing I can do is kill the process "Windows Update Assistant" if I recall correctly, through task manager.



You can also see the output of winver above. It's Windows 10 Home Edition, BTW. If you'd like to see anything else, please let me know.

According to Microsoft support my mainboard is incompatible with update 1709 (it's a standard board bought in 2017, so nothing exotic or ancient). They "determined" this by checking some internal list of tested / validated devices - nobody ever looked at the crash dump. I've repeatedly stated this to each one of the four "technicians" and they all avoided / ignored it. I do lots of troubleshooting myself (but thankfully not using Microsoft software) - and in my experience, you can't really know what the problem is without looking at the actual error message or a trace or dump or something. If you don't you're just blindly guessing what *might* be the problem. But you can't know for sure.

Now, the most annoying thing for me with this whole thing is the automated reboots. I have in the past already spent hours and hours going through blog posts and other online resources how to disable them. Nothing worked. They keep happening, and I keep loosing loads of time.

Now, with this stuck update, Windows Update has basically managed to render this computer useless for work. It keeps rebooting, sneaking it in when I am away from the keyboard for a little while and I come back to all my stuff lost. Now, this isn't just about "saving" some changes I made to a spreadsheet or something. I work in a heavily connected environment where services are being tested across many different systems, and other people depend on what I do, and that the stuff I start remains active. This extremely hostile behavior of Windows Update has a severe impact. How anyone could ever have thought that autonomously rebooting a computer without letting the user confirm it first is totally beyond me - but I digress.

If there's anyone out there that knows how to deal with this, I'd be very grateful.

Stefan

 

[Trouble]

The first thing that I would do is obtain the latest ISO directly from Microsoft and save it to a local folder on my computer.
Using the media creation tool to create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) to install Windows 10 on a different PC
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

I'd then use task manager startup tab to disable all startup items and msconfig to disable all non-Microsoft services as described in Clean Boot article here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows. You'll need to restart after configuring a clean boot on the system.
Empty the contents of C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder. You may have to stop Windows Update and the Crypto service in order to do that.
IF you have any folder labeled $WINDOWS.~BT delete it completely. It's normally a hidden folder so you will have to adjust your explorer view to show hidden files and folders.
You do not want any potentially corrupt files that may be contained in either of these two locations possibly impacting your upgrade.

Then I'd reduce the computer to only required components. USB connected mouse, USB connected keyboard and Monitor.
No other peripherals connected or attached by any means or method. No wireless dongles, no external USB drives, no printers
AND
IF there are any add-in cards that you can comfortably remove, I'd remove those as well.

Then isolate the computer from any network by disconnecting any Cat5 cable or in the case of wireless, disable the device in device manager or in the case of a laptop, if there is a switch turn it off and in the case of an add-in card for a desktop, physically remove it.

Then double click the ISO you downloaded above to mount it and run Setup.exe from the virtual drive that's created from mounting the ISO to perform the upgrade.
Uncheck the box that says something about obtaining updates as part of the process and if you see a similarly worded prompt choose "not now" or "not at this time".

IF following the above procedure is not successful, then......
I got nothin.

I've seen and experienced some pretty bizarre things causing problems with both installs and upgrades but generally speaking they are most often associated with third party hardware or third party software.
Especially third party security suites. I noticed above.....

5) All third party services have been disabled, except antivirus, using msconfig

You should probably go ahead and uninstall that in advance. You can always reinstall it later.

 

[StefanWin10]

Now that sounds like a very elaborate plan! Couple things there that I haven't tried yet.

The USB devices (there's loads of them on this machine) I would never have considered to be impacting an update. And the update being impacted by that I personally would consider a software bug. I'll have to see if that works.

I have already prepared said ISO and was going to try that next. But I very much appreciate the tips around the devices. I've also tried to apply the update via the Upgrade Assistant, which also failed, but more gracefully (no blue screen but instead error 0x8007001f ). That also seems to point towards devices. I have since also updated all drivers I could find, and even flashed the BIOS. To no avail. So it must be something with some random device.

But what confuses me endlessly is the fact that there seems to be no proper diagnostics logging. Most software I work with - if it falls over, you look at the log and you see why it fell over. This doesn't seem to be the case here. Doesn't make sense to me at all.

It's like Microsoft is hiding its software faults in such a way that even their own support teams don't understand them and are left with guess work to figure out what might have happened and are then forced to follow checklists blindly and without knowing the root cause of the error. It's stupid beyond comprehension.

Anyway, I seem to have found one way of actually disabling these things yesterday (the PC survived over night without being updated or rebooted and I haven't seen an update assistant screen since then):

- FIre up Task Scheduler and in -> Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Update Orchestrator
- Disable all triggers for the Update Assistant

That seems to at least have gotten rid of the software's attitude to force the update over and over again, and I am left to decide when I want to apply it.

Bottom line is that the user experience in dealing with this is the total pits. Real shit job by Microsoft.

Cheers

Stefan

 

[Bigfoot99]

Hi StefanWin10.
I feel your pain! Just letting you know that you are not alone in experiencing this upgrade issue to 1709.
I have similar issues trying to upgrade a laptop from 1703 to 1709. It just goes around in circles Downloading Windows10 updates -> Installing -> Failing install (with MEMORY MANAGEMENT error) -> Restores previous version of Windows -> Downloading again later on -> Repeat etc. Done over 40 attempts now, and it's driving me nuts! I can't get any work done. The laptop is a HP Pavilion with 8G RAM and 60GB free disk space. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the PC. The Memory Diagnostic Tool, sfc/scannow and Windows Defender full scan all pass fine. And it doesn't BSOD on me.

Agreed on the lack of proper diagnostic data when the process fails - that's just frustrating.

I have burned the Windows.iso upgrade to a DVD, but haven't tried it yet. Chances are I'll loose stuff if I do this. So I was wondering if you have tried it yet and how you got on with it?

Thanks.

 

[Bob Botts]

Hi StefanWin10.
I feel your pain! Just letting you know that you are not alone in experiencing this upgrade issue to 1709.
I have similar issues trying to upgrade a laptop from 1703 to 1709. It just goes around in circles Downloading Windows10 updates -> Installing -> Failing install (with MEMORY MANAGEMENT error) -> Restores previous version of Windows -> Downloading again later on -> Repeat etc. Done over 40 attempts now, and it's driving me nuts! I can't get any work done. The laptop is a HP Pavilion with 8G RAM and 60GB free disk space. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the PC. The Memory Diagnostic Tool, sfc/scannow and Windows Defender full scan all pass fine. And it doesn't BSOD on me.

Agreed on the lack of proper diagnostic data when the process fails - that's just frustrating.

I have burned the Windows.iso upgrade to a DVD, but haven't tried it yet. Chances are I'll loose stuff if I do this. So I was wondering if you have tried it yet and how you got on with it?

Thanks.

Exact same problem as Bigfoot99. Update automatically fires up every day after first boot, Downloads, Verifies, and gets 83+% installed before Error Code 0x8007001f. The update always allows me to hide it, and continue on with my work. Been going on for about a month, and as you've pointed out, nothings been done to fix it. I've read that Microsoft's been working on a very large and complicated security fix for all Windows systems supported. Other than the distraction, I have been able to get my work done other than the nuisance once a day that lasts maybe 20 to 30 minutes before failure.

 

[Bigfoot99]

UPDATE: I contacted Microsoft support regarding this issue. I gave them remote access to the laptop. They cleaned up some older Windows files that were still on the system, downloaded the latest Windows.iso and started a manual install from this .iso. The support person was "100% confident" that this would fix the issue. Well, it didn't!! It came back with a blue message box saying "We couldn't install Windows 10". "The installation failed in the FIRST_BOOT phase with an error during the BOOT operation. 0xC1900101 - 0x30017", whatever that means. I had my Norton anti-virus disabled during this operation. I'm up to 50 install attempts now, and counting. Still stuck on version 1703. The saga continues!

 

[Bob Botts]

UPDATE: I contacted Microsoft support regarding this issue. I gave them remote access to the laptop. They cleaned up some older Windows files that were still on the system, downloaded the latest Windows.iso and started a manual install from this .iso. The support person was "100% confident" that this would fix the issue. Well, it didn't!! It came back with a blue message box saying "We couldn't install Windows 10". "The installation failed in the FIRST_BOOT phase with an error during the BOOT operation. 0xC1900101 - 0x30017", whatever that means. I had my Norton anti-virus disabled during this operation. I'm up to 50 install attempts now, and counting. Still stuck on version 1703. The saga continues!

The frustration continues, each and every day with the same failure when the update assistant tries to upgrade me from 1703 to 1709. I've I repaired and cleaned up the registry a week or so ago, but to no success. Even ran Windows Update Troubleshooter, got new progress messages in the update, but then finally bombed with the error code. I just don't have time to keep trying different things, always having to back up my system before I try in case I must restore. Who knows what will happen to my system?

 

[Bob Botts]

UPDATE: I contacted Microsoft support regarding this issue. I gave them remote access to the laptop. They cleaned up some older Windows files that were still on the system, downloaded the latest Windows.iso and started a manual install from this .iso. The support person was "100% confident" that this would fix the issue. Well, it didn't!! It came back with a blue message box saying "We couldn't install Windows 10". "The installation failed in the FIRST_BOOT phase with an error during the BOOT operation. 0xC1900101 - 0x30017", whatever that means. I had my Norton anti-virus disabled during this operation. I'm up to 50 install attempts now, and counting. Still stuck on version 1703. The saga continues!

 

[Bob Botts]

Bigfoot99, problem continues here with no indication of what causes problem. Noticed your free disk space is 60GB, so I checked mine. I have a small system c: drive, 223GB with 112GB used & 111GB free. Based on MS support trying to download Windows.iso and trying manual install on yours, and support person 100% confident in fixing, makes me think that insufficient free disk space might have something to do with problem. A few times, I've seen the fix install progress terminate around 80% installed. Since my free space is larger than yours, do you happen to know if your update fails at less than 80%, or does it fail around the same point? I have not tried the support iso download-manual install.

 

[h_smith]

I have been battling (20+ hours) with this lower-end laptop. It has 8GB RAM and 250GB free. The machine came with 8.1 and was updated to 10 Home Edition.

Has there been any progress on this nightmare scenario?

Thanks!

 

[Bob Botts]

I have been battling (20+ hours) with this lower-end laptop. It has 8GB RAM and 250GB free. The machine came with 8.1 and was updated to 10 Home Edition.

Has there been any progress on this nightmare scenario?

Thanks!

I haven't had time to pursue and the Update Windows Assistant fires up every day, and fails every time. I've cleaned the registry twice, freed some disk space, uninstalled a couple of small apps, and noticed the install process 100% finish, notified that Windows will reboot a few times, and then fail before it can even reboot once. The next day, same old problem of failing somewhere around 80% of the install. I will not have an opportunity to pursue further until around the middle of May. I still get my PC work done, just with the annoying update downloads, verify, and install.

 

[h_smith]

I tried downloading the KB from the catalog and in ran for an hour or more. It looked like success and performed installs on shutdown the required a significant amount of time. On reboot, to my utter dismay, the updater did not think it was installed and started to download it for the 100th time. At this point I found a troubleshooter to hide the update. Trying it now.

 

[Bob Botts]

I tried downloading the KB from the catalog and in ran for an hour or more. It looked like success and performed installs on shutdown the required a significant amount of time. On reboot, to my utter dismay, the updater did not think it was installed and started to download it for the 100th time. At this point I found a troubleshooter to hide the update. Trying it now.

Back at it again. A few weeks ago I replaced my 248GB c: drive with a 500GB drive. Finally had a chance to try one more time so I launched Win Update Assistant. It took longer to download, I'm guessing because there's more quality updates than when I last tried in April. It successfully downloaded, verified, then failed with the same old 0x8007001f, either at the end of updating, or trying to reboot. I would appreciate it if you could let me know where to go to download - install the individual KBs. One final note. My daughter's Dell tower updated just fine, and then successfully installed the April Update feature last month. I built my system using a Gigabyte motherboard and Intel 4th gen core Haswell processor. I've read that Intel has tried to update all their processors with new microcode to help protect against the Meltdown & Spectre security leaks. PC manufacturers (Dell) have provided these Intel fixes, but I haven't pursued Gigabyte/Intel to update the microcode. I just wish the Update Assistant would provide a little info on why it fails, more than the generic 0x....1f error code.

 

[StefanWin10]

I've had success after doing the following:
- Unplug every single USB hub and device - run the box naked with just keyboard and mouse plugged in
- Completely uninstall everything that creates a device (DaemonTools for example which creates virtual CD drives)
- Completely uninstall any anti-virus software suites. Full-on uninstall, not just disabled.

Then, the update finally applied.

 

[Bob Botts]

I've had success after doing the following:
- Unplug every single USB hub and device - run the box naked with just keyboard and mouse plugged in
- Completely uninstall everything that creates a device (DaemonTools for example which creates virtual CD drives)
- Completely uninstall any anti-virus software suites. Full-on uninstall, not just disabled.

Then, the update finally applied.

Thanks for the reply. I do have an 8 port USB 3.0 hub installed, so I will unplug it & reboot. I will have to look into device creation Daemons as I'm not aware of any such devices. Then I will uninstall the non-Pro Malwarebytes, but wondered if you uninstalled Windows Defender.
Thanks again.

 

[StefanWin10]

No, I haven't done anything to Windows Defender - just third party software, AVG in my case.

 

[Bob Botts]

No, I haven't done anything to Windows Defender - just third party software, AVG in my case.

Another failure…I uninstalled Malwarebytes, ran CCleaner to fix issues with Registry and to clean the c: system drive. I then shut down the system, unplugged my 5 port USB3.0 hub, unplugged #2 display monitor so that I only had 1 monitor. The only attached devices I had were the USB 2 wireless Microsoft keyboard and mouse. I then powered on and started Windows Update Assistant, Windows10Upgrade9252.exe. The download did not take but a few minutes, then performed the Updating Windows 10, displayed “Your Update is Ready. Your PC needs to restart to complete the update.” After a minute, I restarted the PC, and got some flashes on the display, one “0% complete”, another flash and finally “Restoring your previous Version of Windows.”

Checking the restored system, I am still at Version 1703. Checking the update history:

Feature update to Windows 10, version 1803. Failed to install on 6/10/2018

Quality Updates: Update for Windows 10 Version 1703 for x64-based Systems (KB4033631)
Successfully installed on 6/10/2018

“This quality update states: This update includes diagnostic improvements for determining the applicability of updates in Windows 10 Version 1703, Version 1607, Version 1511, and Version 1507. The files and resources in this update make sure that feature updates are installed seamlessly to improve the reliability and security of Windows 10”.

It seems that the Update Assistant is downloading Ver 1803, performs the update and fails on restart because I’m not at the 1709 Version. I have no idea how to get from 1703 to 1709. Does anyone know how to update the individual quality updates to get me one by one to 1709? Is there a different Update Assistant to do this? These are supposed to be a very critical updates to help protect against the Meltdown and Spectre critical exposures, but I can’t get there after trying off and on for 3 or 4 months.

Thanks again.