Windows 10 downloaded but failed to install (Twice !) on my Windows 7 Pro (64) system - Error Code - 1900101.

 

There's at least 144 GB of disk space free on the Adata SSD and the hardware is Asus Sabretooth M'board with AMD 6 core processor and separate Radeon card.

 

Web advice says that , in order to guarentee a successful installation, I will virtually have to hone my existing system down to safe mode basics i.e. only use an ISO disk installation, remove all extraneous hardware and drivers, including USB, isolate the PC from any networks, turn-off (And delete) the virus protection and do just about everything to limit and impair the function of my existing installation, apart from painting the LCD screen black.  This approach seems to me to be "Shotgun" and something less than fully informed and, according to the many and varied reports of those that have tried this method, doesn't guarantee a successful installation in all cases.

 

So, before, in true Microsoft tradition, wasting three-days of my life attempting to rectify the multiple dysfunctions in one of their less than fully developed products, I thought I would ask on here to see if there were any easy fixes.

 

 

Nick

I've installed it twice. Once on my system disc, creating a fresh partition with W7 on and upgrading to W10. No problems with Avast on the new partition. However I had authenticate problems on both W7 &w10. W7 is now resolved,but in meantine I tried a standalone HD with upgrade from W7 -W10 .nO PROBLEMS AND IT AUTHENTICATED first time. Nice & fresh, but why does it need so much extra memory.

Edited 27 September, 201510 yr by VWD

 

but why does it need so much extra memory.

 

It need it all to remember everything you are doing - and report it back to the mothership in Redmond.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=11&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CGsQFjAKahUKEwjFptO9lpnIAhVGiRoKHanXC9w&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsilverunderground.com%2F2013%2F10%2Fmit-study-tin-foil-hats-amplify-invasive-radio-waves%2F&usg=AFQjCNHn1Vd4B1D78FmfO460xiQLHgJoLw&sig2=ZqRCVrVoonInwv2cU3I9BQ

It didn't want to fire up on mine either. I think I ended up stetting off the install manually for both our computers.

 

Might be easier to download the ISO and just run it form the disk.

 

It needs a lot of space to start with becasue it keeps your old installation for a month so you can roll back if you want.

 

Win10 is ok. Much faster than 7.

I've put in an SSD now and it takes longer to go past the BIOS logo than to boot windows. I can be up and on the internet in about 10sec now.

 

You do need to go in and switch off all the bits that want to talk back to the mothership. Unless you really want the (pointless IMHO) personal assistant running.

It's "alright" IMO. There are a few annoyances though. It takes me more clicks, and a whole new window popping up to get a VPN connection to work, rather than two clicks in the notification area/sidebar. My Start Menu intermittently fails to find apps using the Search function, meaning that I have to use the "All Apps" view - which, thanks to all the complainers from Windows 8(.1) is now a fraction of the size it used to be. The update system seems a bit iffy to me, at least once I've restarted my PC and the same update has still been present, implying it failed (I don't recall ever having an update fail on 8.1).

 

Some games don't work properly, I wanted to go back and finish GTA 4 before buying GTA 5. Simple, you'd think, cos it's Steam. But no, as well as Steam it also relies on Securom for DRM, and Games for Windows Live for multiplayer. The latter of which is no longer available. So I've ended up downloading a no-CD crack to skip Securom, and a patched GfWL DLL, just to make a game that I've paid for playable. I'm not saying it's all Microsoft's fault, ideally Rockstar wouldn't have done any of that stuff, but it's frustrating when backward compatibility just disappears for no reason; maybe Securom has been cracked protection-wise, but it doesn't cause any vulnerabilities within Windows that I'm aware of, so it's frustrating that it doesn't work and is another way of impacting genuine customers without touching pirates (who use no-CD cracks, and edit the theft warnings out of movies anyway).

 

I guess my point is that having used it for a while, personally I don't think I'd stress about it if I'd never upgraded.

Got there at the fourth attempt . . . in a manner of speaking,  finally, using an ISO disk.

 

And then, silly me, after a couple of restarts at my instigation, just to check that all was well and it weren't a fluke, I decided to do a clean-up of the system using CCleaner. Wrong !. This process must have changed a piece of software which controls the wireless mouse and keyboard, because now, the system will boot up to the splash-screen that shows before the sign-on screen and I can get no further because the system doesn't respond to the wireless keyboard and mouse - an early Microsoft Comfort model (About 10 years old), despite re-plugging of the USB connector to the PC's back panel.

 

Back tracking, the original hitch in the  W10 installation process  (It halted post-installation of the new code, on first start-up) did reveal a real peculiarity in the implementation of the Master Boot Record that was supporting the resident Windows 7 and must have originated when I migrated Windows 7 from the HDD to the SSD about 2.5 years ago. From memory, I recall then I had to do a fresh installation on the SSD and, afterwards had left the HDD installed in the PC with the object of using it for data following a re-format.

 

Firstly, it appears that some of the W7 system start-up software (The MBR, or at least parts of it)  was left on the HDD (Although the rest of the drive was empty)  and that, in consequence, unknown to me (For the last two years) the start-up pointers from BIOS went to the HDD (As Physical disk 0:) and then on to SSD (As Physical disk 1).

 

Secondly, on first start-up of the W10 installation, the system followed the BIOS's pointers, went to Physical Disk 0, found part of the boot loader, but could not progress to the SSD where W10 had installed the main body of the system software (As I had instructed) and presumably the MBR, because the inter-drive software boot links were missing. - W10 must have deleted or overwritten them. Why would W10 do this if it had already installed the main system software on Physical Disk 1 ?

 

This is amazing. I would have never have thought that the W7 system would have allowed. or tolerated, the boot loader and MBR to be separated in this way (Of course it could have been duplicates) . But it did and it operated OK for 2 years,  under W7, until now. Thinks . . . was Acronis involved in the past. . . possible yes.

 

Anyway, I managed to correct that situation by deleting the HDD from the partition table and then, after, a restart,  disconnected the power and data links to the drive, followed by a further restart,after which I  re-constructed the boot loader exclusively on the SSD using the W10 "Start-up repair" facility.

 

All was working well 'til I went and did the second silly thing (Above).

 

So, at the moment, on boot-up, the BIOS recognises the keyboard and the mouse and renders then usuable in the MBoards UEFI BIOS menus, but as soon as the main W10 code loads it ceases to recognise them - oddly, when you go into W10 "Start-up Repair" recognition is restored.

 

Any one ?

 

So there we are. One object lesson. Its definitely worth scribbling down on a piece of paper how you installed the system in the first place.

 

Otherwise, I was reasonably impressed with the  speed and ease of the W10 installation -  top-to-tail automation maens it can be left for long -periods, without oversight, whilst it downloads the 3.2GB file, expands it, writes the system, does a couple of re-boots and continues to the First Start-up. This took about an hour and a half with my system.  I was equally impressed with the ease and speed with which it recovered from the installation and start-up errors which ultimately resulted in a restoration/reinstatement of Windows 7, without any loss of Application programs or personal files. Certainly that's something which previous versions of Windows wouldn't have handled so smoothly or completely, if at all.

 

As to the brief view of the new desktop, seems angled towards phone users.

 

 

Nick

Edited 28 September, 201510 yr by Clunkclick

W10 should let you choose between a normalish desktop and the more phonie tablet mode.

 

Not sure about your keyboard issues.

 

W10 has safemode just like other windows. I'd try that and see if things will work enought to let you remove the keyboard so it'll reinstall.

 

Or just try a wired usb until you can get it sorted.

 

Did you do a reg backup before ccleaner? Try restoring?

Edited 28 September, 201510 yr by Aspman

No.

 

No registry back-up - cause I use the CC package frequently and get fed-up cleaning out the "Old stock" of back-ups. Should have done it on a first application. That'll teach me.

 

No worries. I'll try the "Safe mode" and/or  the old PS2 keyboard I've retained for this purpose. Now where did I put that PS2 to USB connector ?

 

 

Nick

I got my lad to download the ISO and burned it to a dvd. No problems installing it (faster than the w7 install, ultimate version, to give it an OS to upgrade). I've kllled anything that wants to talk to MS, including auto updates .The so called non existant games are there - Solitaire/spider solitaire / and two other pyramid games. It certainly takes up more HD space than W7 ,and i suspect is more resource greedy, but the interface is nice and clean. Apart from some new games, and a slight slowdown in operation, I can't see any difference from W7.

Some of HD space it uses can be the image of your old win7 installation. Win10 keeps it in case you want to roll back. Not sure if it auto deletes after the roll back window is over.

Yes it was smaller than the Win7 installation for me (when the restore was removed). And that was compairing Win7 with no added drivers Vs W10 with all drivers downloaded.

And this is why APPLE has become so popular

Just installed ubuntu (Pinguy kept failing on Grub loader install); everything seems fine except every attempt to install printer drivers fails/locks up the installer.

GG- pinguy- isn't that the little Penguin in the cartoon series

You mean the series that promotes poor family values??

Finally ! After five attempts to install from Windows 7 (When it failed at the same point each time (Second boot 75% installed) with error 1900101 - 40017), I decided to shrink the Windows 7 volume on the SSD, re-partition the disk and install W10 on the new partition.

 

Success first time on a newly created and formatted partition (Presume that Acronis had screwed the W7 formatting - BUT running W7;s own disk checking prpgram had shown all OK on the W7 partition) And the fresh install was very quick.

 

But, Being a Windows product, of course, it  only got 50% of the install correct- it automatically, without asking me or requiring any input (Hmmm !)  did a BCD edit on the system partition so that W10 and W7 now dual boot (Niceish)  but then ******-up the allocation of drive letters - don't know whether I can change that.

 

At the outset of the install,it asked for a product code and wouldn't accept my W7 one (Despite making provision for a dual W7+W10 boot), so I skipped on. I'm not sure whether  I will get asked for it at a later date - I've already re-booted the system three times after installing Office 2010, Skype and other crap and nothing further has been requested ?

 

I get the feeling from this product that's its as unfinished as Vista was.

 

And also, a lot of the functions, which the user could, on previous versions of WOS, tailor to his/her own requirements is now the unaterable province of the system. And there appears to have been, a lot of altering of the position of things in the desktop just for the sake of making it look different ? e.g. Windows update has been removed from Control panel and is now stuck under the settings heading in the App window - perhaps this was done because they've again removed the user input option and you can no longer select which updates to download - great, when did Microsoft ever issue a dodgy update that everybody was steering clear of ?

 

And , when you get into the revised desktop, its patently dumbed - down e.g. the app window equivalent to W8 now contains a list of  programs (Including the users own installations) to the LHS of the familiar W8 app icons. However, it appears that the position of these program icons in the list is unalterable by the user, but as compensation, the app and program icons randomly change colour every time you open the app window.

 

The designers have stuck in that annoying Edge feature, making google access more than one-click away . . . I wonder why ? Luckily my ISPs in-house internet protection package popped up with a message that it doesn't like Edge and replaced it, on my authorisation, with IE. So now things are back to normal efficient operation i.e. one click to internet.

 

Up side is that it would appear to be a lot more 64 bit code installed behind the scenes,  as it seems a far bit quicker on this Asus Sabretooth 990 + Bulldozer 6 core than Windows 7.

 

A real bugger is course that they've dispensed with the Media Player - I always found that a bit of music was an ideal aide to productivity, especially when in the depths of composing a tedious letter or spreadsheet.

 

I've yet to find what other "Bloat-menus" or reduced capability they've embedded in it but will be rigourously ripping it out/compensating, given half a chance.

 

Nick

Edited 8 October, 201510 yr by Clunkclick

I see you have noticed several of the original complaints about Win10; it is a locked down, buggered about and  feature lacking ALPHA release; the trend started with Win7 - which is why I held off using it for so long.

Win7 key doesn't work with Win10.

 

The upgrade only works from an upgrade (for OEM Win7). So if you're finding your new Win10 install won't authenticate that's why you can't do a clean install. I've been through this recently with a new drive.

 

I had to reinstall 7 to the point it would authenticate the Win7 key (all legit), THEN fire up the Win10 upgrade disk I'd created.

 

If you've got a retail copy of Win7/8 it's different.

 

PITA but to be honest it didn't take very long.

 

You can change drive letters in Windows through the disk manager but you sometimes need to juggle a bit. i.e. you can't have two Cs at the same time but you can only change one drive letter at a time.

 

The Win10 menu is a bit cluttered to start with, if you're not familiar with the windows phone / Win8 Metro way of managing tiles it might not be apparent what to do. Win10 puts in a pile of crap you can uninstall.

 

There are still media player functions in there only now they're split up into movie player and music. I was never much of a fan of Media Player so I don't mourn it.

 

The search function is much more important in Win10 you can use it to find control panel bits as well as internet searches. It's not hard to set Chrome or Firefox to be your default browser if you don't like edge.

 

Edge is ok but until it has an adblocker I'm not interested.

 

Win10 on an SSD is very very fast.

 

TBH I've been quite happy with it for the most part and it's been very stable like Win7. No crashes so far.

Edited 9 October, 201510 yr by Aspman

Just installed ubuntu (Pinguy kept failing on Grub loader install); everything seems fine except every attempt to install printer drivers fails/locks up the installer.

 

 

Linux Mint here, its great, it just works. The machines here do have a dual boot to Windows, but I hardly ever use it.

I've just checked the System page and the W10 I installed last night has self-activated and secured its own product key, so all is good  - my copy of W7 is retail.

 

I take it that I'm now a fully unpaid-up member of the unsolicited data mining, manipulated purchase and dumb terminal community ?

 

Might as well go the full hog - Anybody got experience of how well W10 interfaces with the MS Lumia smartphones ?

 

I'm ****ed-off at the moment with the half-duplex/ partial arrangement that Blackberry have with the MS Calendar and similar facilities and, with my slightly failing eyesight, the miniature BB keyboard is really getting on my tits.

 

 

Postscript

 

I haven't done any Windows Experience Index stuff yet on the new installation, but my feeling is that my other 8 year old Asus board + Ahtlon 4 core running Windows 8.1 is still faster  (Certainly on OS load and access to the web through IE). That old M88 Evo board is bloody fantastic - its seen  three upgrades of Ahthon processor (Single Core - Dual Core - Quad Core) and 4 OS's (XP - Vista -W7 - W8.1) and gone from HDD to SSD. Unfortunately, AMD/ATI are not providing support for the Radeon 4000 series GPUs in W10 and as the GPU is motherboard embedded, that is the end-of-the-line as far as enhanced graphics is concerned on that MB - though, I understand, that W10's basic graphics driver does support it.

 

 

Nick

Edited 9 October, 201510 yr by Clunkclick

It'll all tie up easily if you're using the same Outlook.com / hotmail account for both.

 

My email and calendars are all shared across both devices and the phone camera automatically backups to to one drive when I come in range of the wifi back home.

 

I haven't actually tried plugging the phone into the PC yet, the only reason to do it would be to update the playlist I have on the phone.

I've just checked the System page and the W10 I installed last night has self-activated and secured its own product key, so all is good  - my copy of W7 is retail.

 

I take it that I'm now a fully unpaid-up member of the unsolicited data mining, manipulated purchase and dumb terminal community ?

 

Might as well go the full hog - Anybody got experience of how well W10 interfaces with the MS Lumia smartphones ?

 

I'm ****ed-off at the moment with the half-duplex/ partial arrangement that Blackberry have with the MS Calendar and similar facilities and, with my slightly failing eyesight, the miniature BB keyboard is really getting on my tits.

 

 

Postscript

 

I haven't done any Windows Experience Index stuff yet on the new installation, but my feeling is that my other 8 year old Asus board + Ahtlon 4 core running Windows 8.1 is still faster  (Certainly on OS load and access to the web through IE). That old M88 Evo board is bloody fantastic - its seen  three upgrades of Ahthon processor (Single Core - Dual Core - Quad Core) and 4 OS's (XP - Vista -W7 - W8.1) and gone from HDD to SSD. Unfortunately, AMD/ATI are not providing support for the Radeon 4000 series GPUs in W10 and as the GPU is motherboard embedded, that is the end-of-the-line as far as enhanced graphics is concerned on that MB - though, I understand, that W10's basic graphics driver does support it.

 

 

Nick

 

Got an M88 myself, just a little 60GB SSD for the Win7 partition, a 1090T Hexacore cpu, 2x8Gb of (cheap) 1600MHz Corsair DDR3 and a 2GB Asus R265 gfxc card; I havent bothered OC'ing the cpu or RAM, the SSD and GFX both max out Windows Experience (7.9), with the cpu and memory at 7.5.

 

It all seems a bit OTT for playing "Spider Solitate".

Of course, they've just introduced those two new top-of-the-range Lumias with 20 megapixel zoom cameras on them.

 

I don't think i'll be in that market, but I expect the price of existing mid-range 600 and 700 series will be coming down.

 

My only qualm is how robust are they ?  Especially the screens ?

 

My existing Playbook and Curve are like tanks.

 

 

Nick

Edited 9 October, 201510 yr by Clunkclick

Got an M88 myself, just a little 60GB SSD for the Win7 partition, a 1090T Hexacore cpu, 2x8Gb of (cheap) 1600MHz Corsair DDR3 and a 2GB Asus R265 gfxc card; I havent bothered OC'ing the cpu or RAM, the SSD and GFX both max out Windows Experience (7.9), with the cpu and memory at 7.5.

 

It all seems a bit OTT for playing "Spider Solitate".

When I purchased that Asus board was in the days when some gaming was still played on PCs rather than game console - the aircraft/flying sims in particular tended to be PC based.

Nowadays those speeds are equally great for video streaming and things like Skype .

 

Nick