I’ve been upgrading various Windows 10 systems from the older 1607 to the newer 1703… I had done over 20 of these updates, just load the Windows update agent and off you go [or let Windows update take it’s course].

Had my own VM that was originally from Windows 7 Pro upgrade to Windows 10 Pro back when Microsoft was giving out the free update.

Well, my VM would not update… It would go through all the motions, download the update, do what was needed for the reboot, then reboot. When it rebooted, Windows 10 was stuck at the Windows ICON. No rotating circles… UGH!

I downloaded the MEDIA install kit, set it as a .ISO file and tried to do the upgrade that way.. Failed with 0xC1900101… So, I tried to boot the ISO directly… It stuck as well…

So, I created an identical VM to mine, and the ISO would boot… This meant the partition structure could be wrong… Oh what hell has Microsoft caused me now???!?!

Alright, I booted my VM, ran Veeam backup to my remote storage… Created a VM and ran Veeam recovery [ok, +1 for testing Veeam backup and recovery]. I let Veeam create the restored partitions [same size disk, it just “put” it back as it was on the original VM]…

Booted up this recreation of my original VM, and voila, we are able to upgrade from Windows 10 1607 to 1703… Amazing… I took the old VM and tried to see if any tool would show me any partition errors… Nope, none… Trinity, Gparted, etc… all showed the old VM was fine [well, it did boot and run windows 10 1607 without issue].

So, my guess… Microsoft has issues with Windows 7 -> Windows 10 and then allowing Windows 10 to update on it’s own.

Also, Microsoft, you stink… I had a valid copy of Office 2010, but after the upgrade to Windows 10 1703, Microsoft said it has an issue with the license. I have the disk and key on the box that came with the disk, and no way to contact you [if you try to activate Office 2010, it tells you telephone support is gone]. Luckily, I have moved on to Libreoffice.