Question Can't update Windows 10 1803

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GamerDad

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Jul 22, 2013
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My computer has been shutting down at random intervals, usually overnight, since friday. Having ruled out any hardware failures, my only probable cause left is that Windows 10 is failing to update. Event logs for windows system only tell me that the last shutdown was unexpected but provides no further reasoning as to why... other than it usually occurs not long after windows update fails.

I've tried deleting the downloaded update and downloading it new again. I've tried the update troubleshooter and did all the "fixes" (i'm convinced it does nothing). I've tried installing from a USB with windows meda creator. I've tried booting from the USB.

None of these solutions works.

Updating from boot tells me I can't upgrade my version of windows because the drive it is on is formatted MBR. Yet Windows is running on it.

All methods of updating usually fail somewhere above 86% install.

I'm running windows 10 1803, October update. It says a new update is available. My version is a free upgrade from windows 8.1 for which I still have the install disc and serial key.

How can I update?
 
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Try this my friend.

Clearing Windows 10 Update Cache:

In order to clear Windows Update cache in Windows 10 / 8 / 7:

  • Press Win + R and then type services.msc and hit Enter.
  • Find and double click on Windows Update and then click on Stop button.
712d9254-a4dd-4ee6-9b1a-9ce756692239

  • To delete Update cache, go to - C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder.
  • Press CTRL+A and press Delete to remove all files and folders.
  • Again press Win + R and then type services.msc and hit Enter.
  • Find and double click on Windows Update and then click on Start button.

In case the old downloaded Windows updates were corrupted on your system, this action would get a fresh download of the update and try installing again.
 
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Windows 10 later versions do require uefi capable drive partitions. If you still have the MBR set as your boot partition it will fail to update. You will have this to be able to update up to and from that update.
When you deploy Windows to a UEFI-based device, you must format the hard drive that includes the Windows partition by using a GUID partition table (GPT) file system. Additional drives may use either the GPT or the master boot record (MBR) file format.

A GPT drive may have up to 128 partitions.

Each partition can have a maximum of 18 exabytes (~18.8 million terabytes) of space.
 
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what kind of moron at Microsoft decided this was ok? To require users to FORMAT their valid drives for an UPDATE? I can understand if this was an upgrade to Windows 11 but come on!

And then to fail to provide a proper error message indicating such an obvious solution? reallly? even microsoft support doesn't come up with this as an answer to the problem!
 
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The_Prophecy said:
Because you are not required to format the drive to convert an MBR disk to GPT: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/mbr2gpt-tool-windows-10

I would still back up your data just in case though, and having a backup on hand anyway is just good practice regardless.
Click to expand...

That’s good news. At least they thought of that... but why they never bring it up is illogical.

That said, everything I’ve seen about this suggests wiping the drive.

I’ll look into this later tonight. Thank you
 
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You can always go into bios and set it to legacy boot method only and then windows will have no choice but to use the MBR format.

Windows can tell your PC has a UEFI bios so it prefers that format over legacy. Mainly cause GPT format is a more future proof format than MBR. MBR can only have 4 partitions on a drive and max hdd size is 2.2tb. GPT can have 256 partitions on a drive and max drive size it can use is 18.8 million tb which is way over the drive sizes we will have for a good while. There are other reasons but those are main 2.

update from boot? do you mean you are installing win 10 over the top of itself? as I think installer will do that if you boot off it. there is no update function specifically on the installer. Its used to install windows or fix window, though you can run it to update PC but windows needs to be running at time.
 
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[QUOTE="Colif, post: 20877058, member: update from boot? do you mean you are installing win 10 over the top of itself? as I think installer will do that if you boot off it. there is no update function specifically on the installer. Its used to install windows or fix window, though you can run it to update PC but windows needs to be running at time.
[/QUOTE]

When booting from the thumb drive you get an option to upgrade windows but it just winds up telling you to do it after booting into windows proper.

It’s just so stupid that if the problem is indeed the format of the drive, why wouldn’t it just outright say that?
 
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The_Prophecy said:
Because you are not required to format the drive to convert an MBR disk to GPT: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/mbr2gpt-tool-windows-10

I would still back up your data just in case though, and having a backup on hand anyway is just good practice regardless.
Click to expand...

So I tried using MBR2GPT but I'm having trouble

I opened command prompt and it tells me MBR2GPT can oly be used from the Windows Preinstallation Environment. Use /allowFullOS to override.

So i type mbr2gpt *allowFullOS /validate

and it retuns:
MBR2GPT: Attempting to validate disk 1
MBR2GPT: Retrieving layout of disk
MBR2GPT: Validating layout, disk sector size is: 512 bytes
Disk layout validation failed for disk 1

So what do I do from there?
 
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Thought it might require the disk to use 4k sector sizes, but after doing a bit of Googling, it seems that is not actually required for the tool to run successfully. Can you open up Disk Management on your machine and grab a screenshot? I'm curious what your partition layout looks like for that disk. Most people I saw having similar issues with disk layout either had too many partitions or some other funky setup.
 
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Well that screenshot tosses that idea out the window. Looks totally fine to me.

I'm reading through the documentation Microsoft created for the tool here. The section regarding log files:

"Logs

Four log files are created by the MBR2GPT tool:

  • diagerr.xml
  • diagwrn.xml
  • setupact.log
  • setuperr.log
These files contain errors and warnings encountered during disk validation and conversion. Information in these files can be helpful in diagnosing problems with the tool. The setupact.log and setuperr.log files will have the most detailed information about disk layouts, processes, and other information pertaining to disk validation and conversion. Note: The setupact*.log files are different than the Windows Setup files that are found in the %Windir%\Panther directory.

The default location for all these log files in Windows PE is %windir%."

Given that the document only specifies the default location of log files for a Windows PE environment, we will start by assuming it will dump logs to the same directory when running from a live OS. Have a look for the two files ending in .log above under C:\Windows and share those with us here. They should give more definitive info as to why this is failing for you.
 
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The_Prophecy said:
Well that screenshot tosses that idea out the window. Looks totally fine to me.

I'm reading through the documentation Microsoft created for the tool here. The section regarding log files:

"Logs

Four log files are created by the MBR2GPT tool:

  • diagerr.xml
  • diagwrn.xml
  • setupact.log
  • setuperr.log
These files contain errors and warnings encountered during disk validation and conversion. Information in these files can be helpful in diagnosing problems with the tool. The setupact.log and setuperr.log files will have the most detailed information about disk layouts, processes, and other information pertaining to disk validation and conversion. Note: The setupact*.log files are different than the Windows Setup files that are found in the %Windir%\Panther directory.

The default location for all these log files in Windows PE is %windir%."

Given that the document only specifies the default location of log files for a Windows PE environment, we will start by assuming it will dump logs to the same directory when running from a live OS. Have a look for the two files ending in .log above under C:\Windows and share those with us here. They should give more definitive info as to why this is failing for you.
Click to expand...

setuperr.log shows this:
2019-02-20 18:11:42, Error ValidateLayout: First partition too close to the beginning of the disk. Should start at offset 17408 or above, found at 4096

2019-02-20 18:11:42, Error Disk layout validation failed for disk 1
 
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Well crap...... I'm not finding any way to adjust partition offsets using Diskpart or any other tool built into Windows, and the third party tools I've found all seem to force you to pay for a license in order to do it. I'll keep searching and see if I can find a free one.
 
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Looks like I found one - MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

It does have a GPT conversion feature in the free version that works without a license. I tested it in a virtual machine on my system and it ran without requiring me to buy it. It may perform the necessary partition offset adjustment before running the conversion, but I would definitely back up your data just in case. Relatively speaking, losing time is ok. Losing files is not.
 
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GamerDad said:
It’s just so stupid that if the problem is indeed the format of the drive, why wouldn’t it just outright say that?
Click to expand...

I have asked that question ever since I saw the GPT error, if it written by someone who understands English it might be easier to understand.

You know, if you have multiple hdd, it would be easier to copy anything on C you want to keep, disconnect all other hdd and fresh install win 10 instead of messing wiht converting to GPT when that is part of the install process already. Much faster in long run
 
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