Windows 10 Update!! My how to.....

So if you have found this page searching for the below error codes I hope this will help you. But as all ways I can take no responsibility for any issues you may encounter. Backup Backup, Backup before you do any thing......  

With the release of Windows 10 (Win10), and being a free update if you own Windos 7 or Windows 8, 8.1 this should be simple right...... Well in my case it was not. I have 4 computers running Windows 7, and 1 running Windows 8.1, and all of these systems have the same issues, "Windows 10 is still validating on your system". So My fisrt reaction was to force the update by going to the MS web site and doing it via the update tool. This ended in me having to rebuild my whole system. I failed during the build, and did not revert back to the current state. I later found this could be because I had a second hard drive that was once a primary drive. I upgraded to a SSD, and kept the old HDD as my storage drive, But to not go back to the current state, not good.

I waited a few weeks for the other machines, and even the brand new build, and still no update. So I had to figure this out. First I went to Windows update on my computer and looked up the update history. Here I found an error Windows 10 failed to install error Code 80240020. What the heck does this mean?? I looked it up on Google, and found I was not alone with this issue. So what I found was that the update downloaded but was bad. So I did what I do at work when the updated come down bad (download is corrupt), go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download then running a command CMD Type in "wuauclt.exe /updatenow" This will start the download and update, BUT I quickly got this error after the build started to run "Windows 10 install error C1900101-30018" What the heck is this???? Back to Google and once more found I was not the only one with this error. In this case it could have been my Antivirus, or another start up service running that caused this issue. So I uninstalled my Anti virus, and did a clean boot of windows. Clan boot is simply stopping any non system start up program from starting, You can follow this link to do a clean boot https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135. Once I removed the AV, and did a clean boot I went back to the above C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download then running a command CMD Type in "wuauclt.exe /updatenow, but this did not work... So off to Google one more time. I found the link to the Windows 10 media builder tool. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10. Follow the link and download the media builder tool for your CPU type. As I have 64bit PCs I used that one. One of the options is to upgrade when you run the media builder, so I ran the update. I sat back and after an hour my first system was running Win 10. I checked it for errors, and found non. I let the system run over night, and then added my content in the morning. It worked!!!!.

The next weekend I did the very same for my Windows 8.1 machine and this worked as well...
As the Win 8.1 machine was older (build and hard ware) it took a bit longer, and when it was done I was every happy. 

So to sum this all up, this free upgrade was not so easy to do....... 

What I did not mention in the above post is I did a full system image before I started the second time. I had to rebuild my computer when I did the first manual upgrade, and did not want to do that again. I used Acronis, as I use it for my job, but there are others and free ones. Here is a link to 5 good ones http://lifehacker.com/5303067/five-best-free-system-restore-tools . I have given the first one a try and it worked for me when I went from Win 7 to Win 8. The last one CloneZilla I have used for years and love it. CloneZilla is a DOS like app that runs under LINUX, and is not what I would recommend for new users. I happen to love this app and it has saved my butt more that a few times.