HELP : Device Access Mgr STILL blocking OS upgrade

[AndiMc]

I apologise for being late to the Win10 upgrade party, but I'm trying to upgrade an aged PC to win10 and I'm getting the problem where Win10 installer says I need to uninstall HP ProtectTools Security Mgr and thereby Device Access Mgr, which the system can't find.  Tried reinstalling DAM but files won't install.  Tried downloading a list of Security Mgr install files from the HP site but none of them will install (no reasons, just  says download failed).  I have read through various threads on here regarding this issue and tried as many of the suggested solutions as I can, with no progress.  Help please.  Am I destined to try and dig out the original Win7 install discs and completely wipe and re-install the PC, just so I can try an Win10 upgrade AGAIN??

[WAWood]

@AndiMc 

I no longer use Win7 due to the security exposure but what I can tell you is that doing a reinstall would be a Major Mistake!  Why? Because you will then be faced with literally HUNDREDS of Windows Updates that will lock up your PC for HOURS if not DAYS.  And then when you're done, you'll still be running an unsupported OS.

I ran into a similar problem upgrading an HP Win7 laptop a while back and I was able to do a clean install of Win10 and still reuse the Win7 license (which ordinarily you can NOT do).  So, if you want to attempt that, then read through the information below ...

You must be prepared to do four things:
1) Make a complete image backup to external drive or large capacity USB stick,
2) Make changes to the reserved system partitioning scheme on your hard drive,
3) Use a different approach than Windows Update to do the Upgrade,
4) Be prepared to do a clean-install, if the Upgrade does not work.

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1: Image Backup:
This is VITAL because the machine is likely to fail the upgrade, and when it does, you will learn that the Win10 GoBack function is NOT reliable, and that can leave you with a corrupted machine that will require factory reset, and losing everything on it, to get it working again.

You avoid this by making an image backup to an external drive or USB stick using Macrium Reflect (MR) which provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.
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2: System Reserved Resizing:
There is a small partition on the hard drive of Win7 preinstalled machines known as System Reserved. This holds something known as the boot loader code. It is 100MB in size -- all that is needed for Win7. But Win10 needs 350MB, and, in some cases, is NOT able to resize this on its own. IF that happens, you have to manually use a partitioning tool to resize it yourself.
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3: Use a different Upgrade approach:
Windows Update is the easiest, but least reliable, way to do the Win10 Upgrade. A much better, and more reliable way, is to use the Microsoft Media Creation Tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

In my case, I created Win10 install media on USB, inserted that, and tried to do the Upgrade while still in Win7. That failed -- miserably!!

So, I ended up having to Restore my PC to Win7 (using the MR backup I had made prior to the Upgrade), and follow the details in step 4 -- and that worked!
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4: Prepare for clean-install:
If you do all this, and after the upgrade, your PC is only partially functioning, that means that the Upgrade did not go well and stuff is still there from the prior OS corrupting the functionality of Win10.

You MIGHT be able to fix this by doing a clean-install of Win10. Problem is that a clean-install often does not recognize the prior activation, even though it should.

So, BEFORE you do the upgrade, follow these instructions from the community Win10 forums about creating a genuineticket.xml file: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/23354-clean-install-windows-10-directly-without-having-upgrade-fi...

You will need this later to activate your Win10 pc after the clean-install.

NOTE: I did the clean-install, and even though the product-key was SUPPOSED to work to activate Win10, it did not. And, calls to MS about this were wastes of time -- since the MS idiots said I could not activate Win10 with a Win7 product key!!

What DID work was using the genuineticket approach documented in the tenforums thread. I copied that from the USB stick where I saved it, rebooted, and after that, my DV6 was activated.

[AndiMc · Accepted solution]

Thank you WAWood for your reply.  Before I followed your instructions I had one more try using an uninstaller and that has worked.  Uninstaller is cleverbridge.com, and that sorted out HP ProtectTools Security Manager (and Device Access Mgr) and also a lingering file of Infineon TPM Pro Package.  Once these were gone the Windows 10 upgrade, run from the MS site, has worked fine.