Two Win8 failed upgrade to Win10 - frustrated!

[carmen617]

I absolutely know it's possible under Windows 10, and frequently recommend the Repair Install.

I just thought it had been introduced with Windows 10, and had never heard of the technique being used under Windows 8.1. I know it didn't exist under Windows 7.

Repair/In-place install totally existed under Windows 7 - I used it all the time. It's been a long time since I did one, but if I recall, the problem was you needed to be able to boot into Windows, and have a DVD with the exact version and flavor of Windows 7 to do it. So, for example, you'd need a 32 bit Windows 7 Home with SP1 disk if that's what the client machine had, or 64 bit Windows 7 Pro SP2. I used to have a full collection of home made and retail media I would pull out to do them. At the time SFC/scannow never seemed to do much of value, and there was no DISM, so in-place install was the best way to try to repair a limping Windows 7 installation that was still bootable.

 

[Diggs]

BUT I was able to upgrade Windows 8.1 -> Win10 1809!

I had a Win7 machine that did this in the past. Wouldn't upgrade to the current Win10 but upgraded to an older version. Not sure why I didn't try this on that Win8.1 that I had. My CRS must have been acting up......

 

[Markverhyden]

I had a Win7 machine that did this in the past. Wouldn't upgrade to the current Win10 but upgraded to an older version. Not sure why I didn't try this on that Win8.1 that I had. My CRS must have been acting up......

I forgot about that as well. There's been a handful of upgrade attempts that failed with the latest version. But when I started with one a couple years earlier it would end up working. Same thing happens on macOS on occasion.

 

[Sky-Knight]

So post upgrade on this laptop clearly indicates the Intel Graphics Drivers for Windows 8.1 are what was halting the upgrade directly to Windows 10 21H1. I'm curious now if I could have made the jump directly had I know that in advance.

Past upgrades on older versions of Windows 10 had the ability to simply exclude software and drivers that wouldn't work, that functionality has been apparently removed somewhere along the way. Which is only reinforcing the Windows 11 line in the sand reality... MS is shedding support for older hardware, and this is obviously happening live now. Windows 10 21H1's installer is not designed to do Windows 8.1 upgrades anymore.

So for everyone here we're going to have to archive old versions of installation media so we can get machines as current as possible via an easy if time consuming process. Our only other alternative is to maintain our own database of known drivers that cause issues with the process. Which is very likely to be wrong all the time. All this injects time and cost into supporting older gear which is only reinforcing the drive of replace, not upgrade.

At very least pushing all these old rigs into a N&P situation as a fallback. Which solves the problem obviously.

Also on this unit, it's a touch enabled ASUS X550LA laptop. The Asus Smart Gesture software installed by Win10 itself was wrong to enable the touchpad no the unit. The screen worked fine, but the tap pad was toast. Installing the correct version requires the old one to be gone, which requires a reboot, which caused Win10 to reinstall the bad one. Ultimately I had to use Revo to remove the "bad one", which got the registry entries enough such that the proper version would actually install and on next reboot I had working touch devices.

A process that's highly annoying and yet also likely to impact a fresh load. Even MORE reason to shed support of this old 4th gen platform. I already told the client it was only an hour of labor for all this, so I can't recover the time. But if I were to bill for this I'd have to charge at least 3 hours of labor to cover my costs. That's $300, cheaper to buy a refurb that works.

 

[NJW]

But if I were to bill for this I'd have to charge at least 3 hours of labor to cover my costs. That's $300, cheaper to buy a refurb that works.

But with the wisdom of hindsight (i.e., experience) it should still be possible to hit that one-hour target – at least, when averaged over all Win10 upgrades. We all have loss-making learning jobs, that become viable in the future, when we know how to do them quickly.

 

[Sky-Knight]

But with the wisdom of hindsight (i.e., experience) it should still be possible to hit that one-hour target – at least, when averaged over all Win10 upgrades. We all have loss-making learning jobs, that become viable in the future, when we know how to do them quickly.

That assumes the process won't change again, also the upgrade from 1809 to 21H1 takes FOREVER. I suppose if I had a larger bench it wouldn't be such a big deal. But this unit took almost 3 hours to do that upgrade, I can't have my bench clogged that long on one piece of equipment not billing.

I've only got room for 2 machines, since this thing isn't meant for retail repairs like this, it's meant for the occasional office machine that blows up and needs a N&P.