Windows Update Problem -- 1909 to Windows 2020H2

[Mike419]

I have a HP Pavilion 550-227C running Windows 10 Version 1909 installed in May 2020. My system locks up every time I try to update to Windows 10 2020H2. (After updating, Windows loads but the screen continually refreshes without ability to control, respond, etc.) I then must had shut-down, reboot with F11 option to System Recovery and uninstall the Feature Update. Any suggestions??

[WAWood]

@Mike419 

These Windows Update blockages are nearly always associated with Conexant audio -- but according to the HP specs, your model has RealTek audio -- so that should not be an issue.  If there are other driver issues blocking your update, then attempting an upgrade through Windows Update is just going to continue failing.

What tends to work better in these situations is doing the Upgrade from Windows 10 media -- but I would certainly NOT attempt to upgrade from 1909 directly to 20H2; instead, I would go to 20H1 and use that for a while.  The most current version of that is build 19041.906.

You can download and create that media by following the instructions in this tutorial that I wrote:  https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Knowledge-Base/Getting-older-builds-of-Windows-10-from-Micro...

Once you have the media built, -use Macrium Reflect to create a backup on a large USB stick or external drive (see below)

Once the backup is done, insert the Windows media into your PC (do NOT boot from it), find the folder containing the media, select the setup.exe file, right-click that and select Run as Administrator.  This will start an in-place Upgrade which could then take a couple of hours to complete.

If you are presented with a window asking for a product key, down near the bottom is a entry you can click to skip that. Do NOT enter a product key, as it will reuse your existing key and when you finish and get back online, Windows will automatically activate.

--------------- Doing Image Backup ---------------
I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) 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) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
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

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.