Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Hawkmoon on December 28, 2021, 07:46:37 PM
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For the past two mornings, when I have sat down at my computer (Dell Inspiron desktop) I have found a message on the screen that updates failed and it is restarting.
This evening I checked Windows Updates and it said the update to Windows 10 release 21H2 was ready, so I told it to go ahead and install it.
It failed. Download okay, the install was churning along up to around 50%, so I walked away. When I can back, it was undoing whatever it had done.
Why can't I install 21H2?
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There's a update troubleshooter in the Settings ap. Maybe run that.
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When was the last time you did a clean install on this machine?
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When was the last time you did a clean install on this machine?
Dunno. Probably when I made the jump from Windows 7 to Windows 10. That would have been a month or so after the end-of-life date for Windows 7.
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Web Search it and ya might find the issue. I did but don't remember it. On 11 now so, there's that.
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When I tried to use Windows Update manually to install the updates, Windows kindly informed me that my computer cannot run Windows 11. So I have a little less than four years to decide what to do about that.
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When I tried to use Windows Update manually to install the updates, Windows kindly informed me that my computer cannot run Windows 11. So I have a little less than four years to decide what to do about that.
Either
A) Switch to one of the many flavors of Linux
B) Hope MS relaxes some of the requirements for 11
C) Retire the Flintstone 2000BC and get or build something newer
I'm going to do a mix of A and C.
C for my main PC (motherboard swap), A for the secondary ones.
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Either
A) Switch to one of the many flavors of Linux
B) Hope MS relaxes some of the requirements for 11
C) Retire the Flintstone 2000BC and get or build something newer
I'm going to do a mix of A and C.
C for my main PC (motherboard swap), A for the secondary ones.
If you swap out the motherboard, won't the digital license go with it? (so you'll have to pay for 11 instead of a free upgrade) I've just started looking at the same thing for a HP 8200 desktop that I've upgraded with an SSD and a large HDD; it has a i5-2700 processor. Or maybe it's an i5-2400, I don't remember. Anyway, it's second generation which is way too old for W11 but it runs 10 very well.
Perhaps if you swap the motherboard first, then powerup and go online with the old W10 install, it will detect the new motherboard and update the license, then you upgrade the OS.
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If you swap out the motherboard, won't the digital license go with it? (so you'll have to pay for 11 instead of a free upgrade) I've just started looking at the same thing for a HP 8200 desktop that I've upgraded with an SSD and a large HDD; it has a i5-2700 processor. Or maybe it's an i5-2400, I don't remember. Anyway, it's second generation which is way too old for W11 but it runs 10 very well.
Perhaps if you swap the motherboard first, then powerup and go online with the old W10 install, it will detect the new motherboard and update the license, then you upgrade the OS.
How to Transfer a Windows 10 License to Another PC
https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-license-transfer-another-pc/
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Either
A) Switch to one of the many flavors of Linux
B) Hope MS relaxes some of the requirements for 11
When we were in Walmart yesterday, I checked out the laptops. (Customer said she bought her new laptop at Walmart. "It cost $300." Wanted to see what I might have in store for me, 'cause she wanted me to transfer data. (Hers was a Samsung Galaxy, ARM processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB "disk", neither upgradable. <sigh>.))
There's a bunch of crap grade laptops, running Win 11. Intel Pentium, 4GB RAM.
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Look at microcenter.com - There is one local to me.
And I haven't bought a new computer since about 2005 or so. Refurbs work just fine for going online or doing vector-based graphics (most vector-based, at least...). If I was doing serious photochop, I would likely upgrade. But I'm not.
My living room computer, which I finally fired up, has Win10 on it, but it has Mint on the main partition. I just have Windows so I can use an old version of Corel Draw.
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How to Transfer a Windows 10 License to Another PC
https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-license-transfer-another-pc/
That won't work with an OEM license. But I wonder if I swap the motherboard and call MS and tell them it's the same computer with a new motherboard they might activate it. But I read on the HP forum today that this exact machine will support W11 if you go into the BIOS and enable TPM 1.2. Might have to turn on secure boot too, and if I do that I might have to reformat the drives. (I've run into that with enabling secure boot on a laptop)
This machine might be a good candidate for Linux in a few years.
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Try the first post in this link before anything else.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/sfc-scannow-and-dismexe-online-cleanup-image/db3b24de-a261-403e-9d11-8141d13f7954
This will both check the actual updates and also look for corrupt system files. You may need to do this twice. May or may not help, but I’ve seen it fix update issues when there are corrupt system files or when the update ‘cache’ has issues. There is probably a more technical MS term, but I’m using cache for how windows stores all the updates now.
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When we were in Walmart yesterday, I checked out the laptops. (Customer said she bought her new laptop at Walmart. "It cost $300." Wanted to see what I might have in store for me, 'cause she wanted me to transfer data. (Hers was a Samsung Galaxy, ARM processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB "disk", neither upgradable. <sigh>.))
There's a bunch of crap grade laptops, running Win 11. Intel Pentium, 4GB RAM.
When I was in a Wally World a few days ago, I saw a bunch of Chromebooks, and a bunch of Windows 11 computers running ... Celerons. I didn't know the Celeron was still a thing.
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Try the first post in this link before anything else.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/sfc-scannow-and-dismexe-online-cleanup-image/db3b24de-a261-403e-9d11-8141d13f7954
This will both check the actual updates and also look for corrupt system files. You may need to do this twice. May or may not help, but I’ve seen it fix update issues when there are corrupt system files or when the update ‘cache’ has issues. There is probably a more technical MS term, but I’m using cache for how windows stores all the updates now.
Problem solved -- it's dead.
Came home from work to find it endlessly cycling between a blue screen of death and a black screen of death. I suspect the Western Digital Green SSD drive has bought the farm. The original hard drive is still in the box and has an earlier version of Windows 10 on it, so the plan now is to re-connect the old hard drive, clone it to a new SSD drive (either a W-D Blue, or a Samsung 870 EVO), fire it up on the new SSD drive, and do a hard update using a newly created 21H2 ISO that I conveniently made last night.
Meanwhile, I'm working on a backup computer.
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When I was in a Wally World a few days ago, I saw a bunch of Chromebooks, and a bunch of Windows 11 computers running ... Celerons. I didn't know the Celeron was still a thing.
Not the same Celeron of old you may be thinking of. Intel still uses that name to refer to whatever is their current line of low end but still modern CPUs
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Problem solved -- it's dead.
Came home from work to find it endlessly cycling between a blue screen of death and a black screen of death. I suspect the Western Digital Green SSD drive has bought the farm.
Let's just say we haven't had real good luck with the WD Green drives.
The original hard drive is still in the box and has an earlier version of Windows 10 on it, so the plan now is to re-connect the old hard drive, clone it to a new SSD drive (either a W-D Blue, or a Samsung 870 EVO), fire it up on the new SSD drive, and do a hard update using a newly created 21H2 ISO that I conveniently made last night.
Meanwhile, I'm working on a backup computer.
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Seriously - have you guys even looked at a listing of the processor chip models?
Let's put it this way - it's easier dealing with auto parts, and various Chrysler versions...
Just how many letters and numbers could they figure on munging together?
Refurb box. Linux Mint. Done.
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Linux Mint has a ridiculously small footprint, works on the most MINIMAL of platforms, is easy to learn and can do a TON.
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Let's just say we haven't had real good luck with the WD Green drives.
So I've heard.
I have a choice of a W-D Blue or a Samsung 870 EVO, both 1TB. Which would you use in the primary computer and which would you use in the spare/backup computer?
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So I've heard.
I have a choice of a W-D Blue or a Samsung 870 EVO, both 1TB. Which would you use in the primary computer and which would you use in the spare/backup computer?
Primary Samsung
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Primary Samsung
Agreed.
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^^^^ "There's an update troubleshooter in the Settings ap. Maybe run that."
Does anyone else find that hilarious? A troublshooter for the updates?
No?
Must be just crazy old me.
I'm not signing this one so nobody will know who posted it.
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Primary Samsung
I second that notion.
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^^^^ "There's an update troubleshooter in the Settings ap. Maybe run that."
Does anyone else find that hilarious? A troublshooter for the updates?
No?
Must be just crazy old me.
I'm not signing this one so nobody will know who posted it.
hilarious? Whatever. Windows updates, at least in versions prior to 10, was prone to breaking and often needed command line with admin rights witchery to get working again. (I have had Win 10 updates get weirdly broken, but not often.)
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Problem solved -- it's dead.
Came home from work to find it endlessly cycling between a blue screen of death and a black screen of death. I suspect the Western Digital Green SSD drive has bought the farm. The original hard drive is still in the box and has an earlier version of Windows 10 on it, so the plan now is to re-connect the old hard drive, clone it to a new SSD drive (either a W-D Blue, or a Samsung 870 EVO), fire it up on the new SSD drive, and do a hard update using a newly created 21H2 ISO that I conveniently made last night.
Meanwhile, I'm working on a backup computer.
Update -- and a slight miscalculation:
I pulled the W-D SSD drive and re-connected the old, physical hard disk drive. Everything fires right up, and I'm on it right now. However ... it seems I mis-remembered my sequence of updates and upgrades. The old drive does not have Windows 10 on it, it has Windows 7.
So my dilemma now is whether to clone the old drive to a new SSD, install that, and then update to Windows 10, OR
Update the old drive to Windows 10 first, then clone it to the new SSD drive.
I'm leaning in favor of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The old drive works, and I know the Win 10 update worked once on an SSD so I'm incliined to clone the old drive as it sits, install it, and then use the .ISO of Win 10 release 21H2 I made two nights ago to upgrade the SSD drive from Win 7 to Win 10. Does that sound like a plan?
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It does sound like a plan. Less chance of borking things on the old drive if it's left with Windows 7. The spinning Windows 7 drive also remains as a backup in case you encounter problems cloning to the new SSD. As long as that drive holds up, you can repeat the process as necessary until you get it to work.
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If you have no data on the SSD that you care about (and it sounds like that might be the case) I would build a W10 21H2 install USB and do a clean install onto the SSD. It should activate automatically.
I just did that recently with the church office computer when it started BSOD'ing on startup. Pastor said there was no data to try to save, and it was faster than trying to reset the old 2004 driver that was on there and then update it to a new version.
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Update -- and a slight miscalculation:
I pulled the W-D SSD drive and re-connected the old, physical hard disk drive. Everything fires right up, and I'm on it right now. However ... it seems I mis-remembered my sequence of updates and upgrades. The old drive does not have Windows 10 on it, it has Windows 7.
So my dilemma now is whether to clone the old drive to a new SSD, install that, and then update to Windows 10, OR
Update the old drive to Windows 10 first, then clone it to the new SSD drive.
I'm leaning in favor of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The old drive works, and I know the Win 10 update worked once on an SSD so I'm incliined to clone the old drive as it sits, install it, and then use the .ISO of Win 10 release 21H2 I made two nights ago to upgrade the SSD drive from Win 7 to Win 10. Does that sound like a plan?
Lots of ways to get to where you want to be. The path I would take would depend on how failed the current drive was, how well prepared I was, how much time pressure I was under, and how many changes had happened since I cloned the old drive originally.
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Lots of ways to get to where you want to be. The path I would take would depend on how failed the current drive was, how well prepared I was, how much time pressure I was under, and how many changes had happened since I cloned the old drive originally.
I have a spare computer up and running, so no real time pressure. And the time since I replaced the hard drive with the SSD was aparently longer than I thought, because the old drive still has Windows 7 on it -- I thought I had upgraded to Windows 10 before installing the SSD drive.
BUT ... one of my hints that things were not right with the SSD drive was that AutoCAD stopped working -- and I wasn't able to get the installation program to run, so I couldn't repair it. The old drive still was a working copy of AutoCAD on it. So that pretty well sets my plan -- clone the old hard disk drive to a new SSD drive, install the new SSD drive, and then do an upgrade to Windows 10 -- probably using the .ISO for 21H2 I just made a couple of days ago.
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I have a spare computer up and running, so no real time pressure. And the time since I replaced the hard drive with the SSD was aparently longer than I thought, because the old drive still has Windows 7 on it -- I thought I had upgraded to Windows 10 before installing the SSD drive.
BUT ... one of my hints that things were not right with the SSD drive was that AutoCAD stopped working -- and I wasn't able to get the installation program to run, so I couldn't repair it. The old drive still was a working copy of AutoCAD on it. So that pretty well sets my plan -- clone the old hard disk drive to a new SSD drive, install the new SSD drive, and then do an upgrade to Windows 10 -- probably using the .ISO for 21H2 I just made a couple of days ago.
Re SSD failure, I posted this a couple days ago on my Book of Faces, referencing a "FB memory" about the first SSD failure I'd seen, from 2017:
-----from the BookFace-------
"And by now we've seen a bunch more.
"They tend to fail in much the same way as standard hard disks do. Some go "poof" and instantly fail. Most that fail fail more slowly, with accumulating bad sectors*, or performance problems**.
"So, if in doubt, run the manufacturer's diagnostic. Short test, >>and<< long test. And if that says there's a problem, believe it. And keep your data backed up.
"-------------------------------------------
"'*Bad sectors' -- obviously there's something else going under the hood, memory cells failing or whatnot, that's being presented to us in metaphor of a traditional hard disk.
"** I had one a few weeks ago. I'd installed it at the beginning of the year. In Nov. it starts taking a long, long time to boot. Put the drive on my shop pc. Linux smartctl diag said there was some unspecified error with the drive. File system was still accessible, so I used ddrescue to clone to an image. That clone, for a 240GB disk, took >>3 days<< to complete. (It should take an hour or two at most.) But, all data was recovered. Ddrescue reported a small number of unreadable spots."
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Aren't SSD drives supposed to have on-board software that automatically maps bad "sectors" (or whatever SSD drives have)? Of course, that doesn't help if an area that already has data on it goes bad after the data was written.
I ran a couple of diagnostics on the questionable drive with it hooked up as an extrnal using a USB umbilical cord, and they all reported it to be ok (WCIIM, CHKDSK, and Crystal Disk. When I looked it it with File Explorer after running the diagnostics, though, I found a string of files with just numbers -- which, IIRC, indicate file fragments that were recovered by CHKDSK. So something was bad, but I don't know what.
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What are good brands of SSD, besides Intel and Samsung which are freakin' expensive? Then the cheaper brands almost look too cheap. Nothing seems to be in between. (I've not looked all that hard; I thought the church computer HDD needed replacing so I started looking, but it just needed a reinstall.) Are Kingston and PNY okay?
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What are good brands of SSD, besides Intel and Samsung which are freakin' expensive? Then the cheaper brands almost look too cheap. Nothing seems to be in between. (I've not looked all that hard; I thought the church computer HDD needed replacing so I started looking, but it just needed a reinstall.) Are Kingston and PNY okay?
What are you considering inexpensive? I find the Samsungs to be very reasonably priced for the quality. Their hotrod versions aside, $100 for 1TB seems pretty reasonable.
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What are you considering inexpensive? I find the Samsungs to be very reasonably priced for the quality. Their hotrod versions aside, $100 for 1TB seems pretty reasonable.
I guess I was looking at the "Pro" line. $200+ for anything from 240GB to 500GB. I don't need that, but it makes me question the $20 drives. :laugh:
I put a refurbished Intel 180GB (don't remember what it cost but less than $50) and a new 2TB HDD in my desktop a few years ago and they get along great together. The SSD does most of the work.
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What are good brands of SSD, besides Intel and Samsung which are freakin' expensive? Then the cheaper brands almost look too cheap. Nothing seems to be in between. (I've not looked all that hard; I thought the church computer HDD needed replacing so I started looking, but it just needed a reinstall.) Are Kingston and PNY okay?
What we use at work are Sandisks. Now part of Western Digital. We've seen a few fail, but we sell a lot of them. (Cloning to SSD for a performance improvement is a cash cow.)
Kingston and PNY. Small sample size. The first one I bought myself. years back, is a Kingston. Still going. Not sure what machine it's in. PNY in the machine in front of me, no problems.
Both HP branded drives I bought failed prematurely. Poof, gone. I was able to reset one, but I'm not going to trust it.
The ones we see that seem iffy are the off brand "Chinatronic" drives that I see installed in secondary market refurb pcs.
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4 Kingstons - Zero problems
1 Crucial - Zero problems
1 Samsung - Zero problem
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I’ve had a few Crucial failures in under a year (in arrays, so no data loss) which lead to me using Samsung everywhere else. No issues yet with Samsung but I’m sure we will have them eventually.