Updating to windows 10 creators fall edition 1709 fails

[dan42]

Windows 10 1709 creators fall update: Failed in Safe_OS Phase

I have the following Symptom:

A Guest machine running windows 10 creators edition 1703 is failing to update to windows 10 creators edition 1709.

On update it downloads , installs, and reboots to rollback to the old 1703 edition. Then it continues to update again and again every few days, and rollback. 

I ahve found this happens from system update as well as from a standalone USB created from microsofts MediaCreationTool.

When using the standalone USB the following message  comes:

0x80070570   0x2000C

"Installation Failed in Safe_OS Phase with an error during APPLY_IMAGE operation"

I have spent the best part of a Saturday trying to resolve this isssue:

I tried the following, testing an upgrade each time

1. Tidied up temp files

2.  turned the following services to automatic and rebooted

     BITS, Windows Update Service, Cryptographic Service)

Then I changed to the standalone USB  and after continued failure did the following, testing an upgrade each time

3.  Expanded the virtual disk disk, so there is now over 60GB free (beforehand it was ~20GB)

4.  Converted disk from split_sparse 2GB  (growable) to  split flat 2GB  (preallaocated,3)

5.  Set Graphics accelerater  to off in VM setting

Is there anything else that I should do ? Any ideas ?

Dan

Host:

   intel cpu  (I thought I might have to remove mcupdate_genuineIntel.dll from the update image, however there is no install.wim in sources of the update image so I can't easily)

   Windows 10 creators fall edition 1709 PRO 64 bit

   vmware 14.1.1 workstation pro build 16299

Guest

   windows creators 1703, UK version PRO 64 bit

   HW version 11

p.s:

On my Apple MAC laptop, Under parallels Pro on a elCapitan Mac-OS host, updating 1703 to 1709 works perfectly right from the start

[dan42]

I have now tried

1. updating to Hardware version 14, Same problem, windows rollbacks the upgrade

2. cloning and copying to another harddrive (it was on a samung 750 SSD) and has now a clone on a flash drive, switched off kaspersky before updating. windows rollbacks the upgrade

3. called the windows troubleshooter, let it fix everything, switched off kasperky before updating,  and then retried the update. windows rollbacks the upgrade.

"Rollbacks the upgrade" means: after  doing all downloading and installation, the update process asks to restart, and after reboot gets to 10% "working on updates" the blue windows logo appears  for about 30 secs with the progress circle of dots and then the message appears  "restoring your previous version" followed by scan disk and I'm back at version 1703.

and one other point is that the VM tools are the latest

I feel there is something wrong with VMware workstation pro 14.1.1, somehow not being hardware compatible. I've managed to update all my bare metal machines to windows 10 1709  as well as a windows 1709 guest installation under Parallels but not VMware.

I can only hide 1709 using the microsoft utility to hide installations (wsushowhide.diagcab) until another idea comes up or an upgrade to version 14.1.1  of VMware arrives.

The fallback solution is to create a new VM guest and freshly install windows 10 1709.  But then I would have to carry out a full setup and restore of my files and recompile boost.

Any ideas ?

[Scillonian]

This happens with physical machines too so the problem is not unique to VMware Workstation. (I've had it happen with an old Toshiba laptop.)

In simple terms the Windows 10 Feature Update process is split into online and an offline phases. During the online phase the update is downloaded (or copied from a USB/DVD/ISO) and staged ready for installation. During the offline phase the current Windows installation is moved to the Windows.old folder, the new Windows installation is created, drivers are installed and the user settings are migrated from the old installation.

During the offline period up to the first restart at ~30% a minimal installation of the new version of Windows is being created will take over the rest of the installation following the restart. It could be a file/folder permissions problem but that is only a guess. It was be worth looking in the Windows Event Logs to see if there are any errors or warnings that relate to Windows Update around the time the update was downloading and installing (online phase).

With the Toshiba laptop I just reinstalled Windows as it was quicker than trying to troubleshoot the problem. I could reinstall Windows 10 in less time than it took to download the update!

Windows 10 1803 will be released in a few weeks with an updated update process so it may be worth waiting to see if it works.

... and recompile boost

What is 'boost'?

[Scillonian]

A Google search for 0x80070570 0x2000C found this reply on answers.microsoft.com:

BulldogXX replied on January 11, 2017

In an upgrade to Windows 10, error code 0x80070570 stands for ERROR_FILE_CORRUPT. This indicates that the Windows system files of the underlying operating system are corrupt.

The series of codes beginning with 0x2000... occur during the SAFE_OS phase of a Windows 10 upgrade. That's the portion of the upgrade when the recovery partition is setup and the updates needed to upgrade the underlying operating system are applied.

The 'C' suffix in 0x2000C stands for SP_EXECUTION_OP_APPLY_IMAGE which means that the updates to the underlying operating system could not be successfully applied.

To put the whole thing in non-technical terms: Your existing version of Windows is corrupt and because of that it can't be upgraded to Windows 10.

There are steps you can take to possibly fix your operating system before trying to upgrade again, but they are technical, time consuming (CHKDSK, SFC, DISM) and there's no guarantee that they will fix whatever is preventing Windows 10 from installing.

The best thing to do - if you're sure that all your computer's hardware is compatible with Windows 10 - is a clean install.

[dan42]

Thanks for the response. When I was initially looking I didn't manage to find the detail from microsoft 0x80070570 0x2000C.

I think I did SFC scannow, without any effect.  DISM is very time consuming , you have toi know what you are doing, and without any surety of success.

Somehow it feels like a VM disk is not accessible to the upgrade as its going through its last stages. Bulldog's entry makes me think maybe it is the recovery partition. maybe too small or something. I guess it has to be contiguous space, it must be another VM virtual disk or somehow in the #1 VM disk.

the main routes left are, as you said

1) Wait for another windows 10 upgrade 1803 and see if that allows an upgrade of my current VM.

2) Wait for the next upgrade of W10 1803 and clean install that on a new VM, and then install Visual Studio and Boost ( a  rather large C++ library, see below)

plus

3) Try out ideas on a clone VM, like deleting the recovery partition. Maybe the installer then creates it's own new recovery partition

4) Wait for VMware upgrade to 14.1.1 and see if that works.

So it will be (3) if I find time; then (1) and finally (2). If (4) comes in the next months then  I can try that but I don't give it much hope.

p.s: boost is a c++ large library that takes an hour of so to compile and then 5 minutes to 2 hours or so to integrate with visual studio, so I'm trying to avoid that. and I don't enjoy configuring Visual Studio.

[Scillonian]

Microsoft has recently released a utility called SetupDiag.exe. Details of this utility and a download link are available here.

I've only run this utility on a system that successfully updated so don't know how useful it may be.

[dan42]

I've now tried windows 10 1804 that was released yesterday: That has exactly the same behaviour.

0x80070570_0x2000C

The installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error APPLY_IMAGE operation

I'll now try the  diagnostic Utility from microsoft SetUpDiag.exe.

[dan42]

Today

I tried the diagnostic tool , I have a  rather large log file  and zipped output including errors but I am no smarter.It's just too complex  and large to read through in detail and the errors might not be fatal errors.

Then I turned to the recovery partition as being suspicious.

I tried creating a repair usb; that gave an error:  So I did all the necessary dism steps to extract wiminstall and create a repair usb and repair disk.

Then I deleted the recovery partition.

and tried W10 1803 upgrade again, same again , it restored my old OS

So I have exhausted all the possibilities,  and there is no VMware update.

That means I will install Windows 1803  on a new VM with new license key and reset my machine up. That will be another 6 hours in the next month or so, but a clean machine. Hopefully I don't have a repeat of the problem with the another windows 10 upgrade.  I'm wondering whether W8:1 might be better for VMs used as development machines, where one requires a stable environment, for the next couple of years.  Any thoughts ?

[Scillonian]

As stated before this error is related to a corrupt system file in the current Windows 10 installation In the VM. To find what the corrupt file(s) are I would go through the log file and search for errors related to file create/move/delete/read/write operations.

If you install Windows 10 1803 over the existing install it should reactive without needing use a new license key.

Have you checked the disk for errors to eliminate disk errors as a cause?