HP Pavilion HPE-170t Windows 1903? It's at 1803.

[maxgain]

Can an HP Pavilion HPE-170t be updated to Windows 1903? It's at 1803.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I don't know about your specific model, but I have two HP business desktop PC's, a dc7800 with an Intel Series 3 chipset and an 8000 Elite with an Intel Series 4 chipset, and they both run W10 Pro v1903 just fine.

Your PC's Intel Series 5 chipset is newer than either of mine.

The only way you are going to know for sure, is to click on the blue Update Now button and the link below, and try it out.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

[maxgain]

Thanks, Paul, actually my processor is an I7, though. I've tried to do the update from the site you mention, and it runs for hours, and always stops at 60%. Usually it gives the 0xc1900101-0x30018 error. I've tried uninstalling the 3rd party anti-virus, and disconnecting peripherals, and updating all drivers. No matter what I do, it still won't complete the update. I wondered if the problem is that I never updated from 1803 to 1809, but I never saw that update, and now I don't see any way to get 1809. All the update web sites go directly to 1903. I realize that my PC is pretty old, but if I can make it work for another year or so, it would be great.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Your PC may have an i7 processor, but it has the H57 (series 5 chipset).

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01976261

I have a couple of suggestions...

1. You can back up any files you want to save onto a portable hard drive, and see if you can clean install W10 v1903 using the media creation tool to create a bootable usb flash drive, or save the ISO file which you can burn to a DVD using the Microsoft utility that I zipped up and attached below.

2. Here is the link to the W10 x64 v1809 ISO file.  Save the file and use the tool I attached to burn the file to a DVD.

Then run the DVD from the windows desktop and see if you can upgrade to v1809 that way.

If it asks you if you want to check for updates, select the skip option, or it will hang there for eons.

This link will be good for 24 hours from the time of this reply...

https://software-download.microsoft.com/pr/Win10_1809Oct_English_x64.iso?t=e056709d-57fc-457d-9300-5...

[maxgain]

Okay, I tried your suggestion 2, at least as best as I could, not being a technical kind of a guy, and again I got the 0xC1900101-0x30018 error. I am not sure what you are telling me to do in step 1. Could you walk me thru it step by step, and I once again want to thank you for going out of your way to help me.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Sorry that didn't work.

Clean installing W10 would require that you reinstall all of the files and programs you want on the clean W10 installation.

It is not an upgrade.  If there are programs that came with your PC, you will not be able to reinstall those unless you saved the installation files that were originally in the Windows 7 C:\SWSetup folder.  That folder should have carried over to W10 unless you deleted it.

Save any files you want to reinstall on the new installation onto a portable hard drive.

What I do is to copy all of the folders in my user profile to a portable hard drive (documents, favorites, pictures, downloads, music, etc).

From the media creation tool link I posted earlier today, you can make a bootable USB flash drive installer (if your PC can boot from a USB flash drive), or you can download an ISO file instead, and burn it to a DVD just like you did with the v1809 ISO file and boot from that.

After you create the installation media, you boot from it, and then read the info at the link below for how to clean install W10.

You can elect to delete all partitions or let W10 install over the current windows partition and it will create a Windows.old folder.

When you get to the part of the installation process where you are asked to enter a product key, select the I don't have a product key' option, and W10 will install and automatically activate once you are connected to the internet.

You can also explore the windows.old folder and copy any files you need to the new installation and delete the windows.old folder using the disk cleanup utility>cleanup system files.

https://turnkeypoint.com/install-windows-10/

[maxgain]

Thanks for your quick response. I will try this.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Before you even do that, I use this free disk imaging utility to create a system image.

You may want to make a system image and rescue DVD that you use to access the system image stored on a portable hard drive.  This program will allow you to do that.

Then if the clean install doesn't work, you can restore your PC to its current state.

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

[maxgain]

OK, thanks again, Paul, for your help, but this is getting far too complicated for a non-tech guy like me. I guess I'll give up on ever getting to version 1903, and hope that nothing too terrible happens to me. I really think it's no fair that Microsoft can't give me some meaningful error msgs, instead of just '0xc1900101-0x30018 means try sixteen different things'. I'm paying 15 bucks a month for HP support, and still can't get this resolved. An update should not mean throwing out the computer and buying a new one. Even if that's the case, the error msg should TELL me 'throw out the computer and buy a new one'.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

HP won't help you because your PC was never supported for W10.

Have a friend come over, read my replies and see if they can clean install W10 for you.

We all have different skill levels as well as risk tolerance levels.

There are things I would never attempt to do myself, where others would find it a piece of cake.