Windows 10 upgrade stuck at 99% – or 70% or 80%?

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You have several options, especially if you’re trying to beat the Friday “free upgrade” deadline. InfoWorld Woody on Windows
[See the full post at: Windows 10 upgrade stuck at 99% – or 70% or 80%?]

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What’s the betting that MS extend the date because of this !!!! LT

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I’m one of those stuck individuals.

I’ll say it once : I was negligent to wait until the last moment in order to do the upgrade to W10/restore W7 trick.

And now I can say with confidence : seeing all the people who tried far harder than me, and for much longer, and who are still stuck at 99 % or less, I don’t regret it for a minute.

The thread you linked to says it all :

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/windows-10-upgrade-assistant-is-stuck-at-99/1708a411-3255-4bec-804a-d2553f2fd645

The solutions offered there by several devoted MVPs spill the beans, really. That you should have to jump through such hoops just to go along with a massive Microsoft marketing campaign trying to persuade you to switch to the best thing since baked bread means one thing : Windows 10 is a big, big piece of junk.

Don’t pretend to make it free if you can’t make people actually get it for free. Why can’t people just download Windows 10, stick their Windows 7 product key and be done with it ?

One of those MVPs even advised to upgrade the PC BIOS. Recommending this incredibly dangerous step just hours before the deadline, after a year of Microsoft poking us constantly in the ribs in order to make the jump, telling us how easy it is, is incredible.

It really seems that Microsoft is enjoying humiliating its users by making them lose hours and days of their precious lives, in order to take advantage of a free offer. Throw at them something for free, and look at them scrambling desperately trying to grab a piece of it.

I’m more than happy to let the blasted “upgrade tool” run its course, whether it succeeds or not. I’m not going to do anything else to repair Microsoft’s botched job. I’m not dismantling my PC to bits and I’m not uninstalling scores of software just in case it might accomodate Microsoft’s “easy upgrade path”.

If this thing that’s running under another account currently can’t do the job by itself, I’ll follow your InfoWorld advice and say to hell with it.

The thing is, I’m afraid I’ll still have to restore my whole system if this rigmarole fails. God knows what Microsoft has already messed up in my system.

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Updating : apparently the Microsoft gnomes have succeeded to make something of my PC. Box says :

“Your upgrade is ready. Your PC needs to restart to complete the upgrade”.

There was a countdown with 11 minutes to go. I stopped it with the link “Restart later”. Now the box says : “Save your work and leave your PC plugged in and turned on. If you choose to restart later we’ll automatically restart the PC when you’re not using it. The upgrade usually takes 90 minutes or less to complete, but we’ll let you know when it’s done”.

WHAT ?!? 90 more minutes to go “for the upgrade” ? So what was going on during the last 7 hours that the “update tool” was running ? Microsoft gremlins fooling around ? I think installing W7 from scratch takes much less than 90 minutes, never mind 8 hours and a half…

To recap :

– The update tool was running under my admin account, where I couldn’t see what was happening, since I always work under my non-admin account. If I hadn’t switched precisely at that moment to see how things were going, what would have happened ? No warning to backup current work, just Microsoft deciding to restart by itself ?

– Even if you chose to “Restart later”, there’s no way to decide when you want to restart. Microsoft gets to decide because Microsoft knows best. They will restart the PC “when I’m not using it”. How do they know I don’t want to use it ? Say, I go to the bathroom, so MS “knows” that I’m not using my PC anymore, they restart it, and it enters a 90-minutes cycle of “upgrading”.

Will I be able to use the computer during that cycle ? They are not saying. What if I’m working against a deadline, and I have something critical to do precisely at that time of the day ? Too bad.

What happens if I shut down the PC now ? What happens if this is a portable, I have an appointment and I need to switch it off and take it with me ? Nobody’s telling. It’s free, so shut up and get on with it.

At every turn, it seems that Microsoft enjoys bullying its users, with no discernible reason, just because. It really seems they are doing everything to make you understand that they are in command, not you.

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Clairvaux…….. Oh! what a mess……. I feel for you…. Just thought when reading your comments.
If you really want to put an end to this and not let
the upgrade continue/finish. What one person I know did was to do a System Restore which just got her back to before it all happened (of course) and no mess to clear up. The other thing was a comment PKCano mentioned someone she knew just pulled the plug out of the socket…… that’s if of course yours is not a laptop. Keeping fingers crossed! LT

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I tried to upgrade weeks ago but due to a flaky ASUS motherboard that didn’t boot Win7 properly every time the Win10 upgrade wouldn’t complete successfully. So last night I swapped in a new MSI motherboard. That part went smooth, installing the new hardware drivers in Win7 didn’t.

Even just trying to install the Intel chipset drivers it would hang around 97%. Or when I tried to uninstall the old ASUS software it would hang. So eventually decided that if I could get the NIC drivers installed and get out to the net I could do the Win10 upgrade.

NIC driver install worked fine and a few hours later the Win10 upgrade was completed with no problems.

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Very innovative solution!

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Thanks, Lizzytish. In all fairness, Windows 10 finally installed itself properly, and, let me say this in tribute to Woody’s hard work, I even like what I see.

Did I just say that ? I can’t believe myself.

W 10 spent a good half-hour of its young life on my PC not recognising properly the monitor, giving me squeezed and unreadable fonts. Then, out of the blue, it suddenly decided to behave all by itself.

It’s very fast (compared to my slow as molasses W7 install which is only 8 months old), despite the fact that it’s not a clean install. There are some very interesting ideas in the new File Explorer and Desktop.

As far as I can see for the moment, everything was imported properly. I even think I remember now that the upgrade should not have happened, because my W7 setup is based on a custom Sysprep scheme whereby all User folders have been moved from C to D. And you are supposed to undo this before upgrading. Yet it worked.

I’ll probably nuke the install though and revert to W7 for the time being, confident in the fact that I can upgrade when I want. If I feel like being spyied on.

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Woody,

Is it necessary to tie the W10 install to a Microsoft online account in order to hold on the digital licence ?

I would prefer not to if it’s avoidable. For the time being, Settings / Update & Security / Activation says “Activation = Windows is activated” and “Product key = Windows 10 on this device is activated with a digital entitlement”.

I didn’t do anything for this…

Thanks !

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Read this recent Majorgeeks.com article titled “How to Prevent a Windows 10 Download Freeze Up”:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/how_to_prevent_a_windows_10_download_freeze_up.html

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If you’re activated, there’s absolutely no reason to log in with a Microsoft account. It’s just a safeguard in case you can’t get activated.

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Great. Thank you so much.

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Well that’s a relief……… I’m so pleased to hear that it was all successful… and that it seems to have a lot going for it……. If only the snooping and the mandatory updating had been modified or dumbed down…….. then it would certainly be a good bet….. or if we do the other thing…which is
TURN A BLIND EYE! LT.

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Just to add some counterpoint to all the above negative comments. I had the sole objective of getting a Windows 10 digital entitlement before the free offer expired so I located a viable hard disc out of an expired laptop, reformatted it, and installed it as the C disc in my desktop, having disconnected all other discs both external and internal. As I thought the process was most likely to succeed if the computer was set up in the simplest way possible, all I had connected were a USB mouse, a USB keyboard, an old 1024×768 monitor I had hanging around connected via a VGA connection, and an ethernet connection to my router, no wifi.
I started the installation using a DVD I had just made using the Win 10 media creator, opted for the Clean install rather than the upgrade, and then I had the option of entering my Win 7 Home product code and getting a plain vanilla version of Win 10 or entering an old Win 8 Professional code I had picked up cheap years ago in a special offer and never got round to using and hopefully getting Win 10 Pro installed at minimal cost. I opted for the latter as I was never likely to use the product code and it seemed a waste not to use it.
I soon ran into a problem because the installation would not proceed as my disc had a Master Boot Record and it said it needed a GPT which I soon found out was a GUID Partition Table. Some Googling got me some command lines which (used on my desktop with the Win 7 C disc temporarily back in use and the offending disc connected by an external adaptor) successfully converted the disc to GPT.
I put the disc back into my desktop and proceeded with the installation, the only glitch being a message that the disc partitions were not in the recommended order. After a little more research I ignored this and, using my Microsoft account when asked, proceeded with the installation to a successful conclusion. I had Win 10 Pro activated and ready to go with a valid digital entitlement for the minimal cost of an unused licence I had almost forgotten I had! So I really have no complaints about the Win 10 installation process.
When I want to install Win 10 and use it for real, all I will have to do is do another clean install using preferably a Solid State Disc (on the same motherboard of course) and log in with my Microsoft account to activate the installation.

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I’m hearing most computer repairers referring to this as windows10 update constipation.

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Bravo. That’s the cleanest way to do it….

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