[German]I recieved a report from a German administrator, telling me, that inplace upgrades from Windows 10 (22H2) to the current Windows 11 version 22H2 fails in his enterprise environment. The issue has been observed since August 8, 2023. After I've published the German edition of this blog post, more affected users confirmed that. Finally the administrator came back with a solution, the dynamic updates downloaded during setup seems to be the culprit. Here is an overview about that topic.
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An administrator reported that issue
German blog reader Johannes K. needs to upgrade machines from Windows 10 22H2 to the current Windows 11 22H2 in his enterprise environment. For this purpose he used an inplace upgrade so far, but is now facing issues since early August 2023. He told me:
Hello Günter!
We use the inplace upgrade for the upgrade from Windows 10 22H2 to Windows 11 22H2 with the following. Command:
setup.exe /auto upgrade /eula accept /noreboot /migratedrivers all /ReflectDrivers "%ProgramFiles%\McAfee\Endpoint Encryption\OSUpgrade"This method worked fine until Monday 7.8.2023.
Today Wed 9.8. the upgrade hangs at "Updates are retrieved 46%" very very long, then at "Installation readiness is checked" a small eternity, until after a reboot is still Windows 10 on it.
Yesterday Tue 8/8 was the infamous 2nd Tuesday of the month, Update Day at Microsoft. Did MS screw something up?
Have any of you made the same observation?
Thanks
Johannes K.
At the time when I've published the German edition of this article, I wasn't aware of such report. But after publishing the German article, the feedback in a closed administrators' group on Facebook confirmed, that someone had noticed the behavior discussed above. Also other German administrators came back with comments, confirming this observation.
What you could try
Ad-hoc I would guess a driver problem during the upgrade. The upgrade should actually create log files with the steps taken. The log files can be found in the hidden folders:
$Windows.~BT\sources\Panther $Windows.~BT\sources\Rollback
and could possibly provide information about what went wrong. In the German article Windows 10 Upgrade-Troubleshooting FAQ – Teil 1 you can find some hints. I had also given some hints in the blog post Windows 11 22H2: Issues and upgrade stoppers to look for files with _HumanReadable.XML in the name in the Panther folder and open them in the editor. Then look for <inventory> XML node. The <Property> nodes specify what causes the show stopper (see also here).
A possible solution: Avoid dynamic updates
The administrator, who reported the issue above, came back later with the following comment, outlining a solution he found.
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Dear Community!
The solution for me is to not do the installation of [dynamic] updates during the inplace upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. This is done with the parameter /dynamicupdate disable.
With this assumption the command to initiate the inplace upgrade looks like this:
setup.exe /auto upgrade /eula accept /dynamicupdate disable /noreboot /migratedrivers all /ReflectDrivers "%ProgramFiles%\McAfee\Endpoint Encryption\OSUpgrade"
It's here a special environment with McAfee Endpoint Encryption, but it the culprit was the dynamic update during setup, which ist disabled within the above command.
What is an Inplace Upgradet?
An in-place upgrade is an approach that reinstalls Windows from a running Windows from the installation media using setup.exe. Then, one has Windows reinstalled, with the option to keep files and, if necessary, applications. The latter approach usually saves the hassle of setting up the operating system after reinstallation, prevents data loss, and can sometimes fix persistent errors resulting from a damaged Windows. The approach can be used to repair a Windows 10 or 11, or even to upgrade from Windows 10 to WIndows 11.
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