HP 17-ak043ng can´t upgrade Win 10 due to bad drivers (0x1900101)

[peon2t]

Hello

I got aHP 17-ak043ng Notebook.

I can´t upgrade Windows 10 to any current version (newer than 1909) because it always gives the error 0x1900101 - 0x20017.

According to Microsoft and other sources, this error is caused by incompatibe drivers. However, HP Support Assistant says that I have the latest drivers and that there are no updates of any sort available.

I also checked/tried a ton of other suggestions but nothing helps.

When I tried to contact HP support about this it said that my warranty has expired and therefore I can´t send the a mail... but I hope that HP provides driver updates etc. for more than a year?!

Thanks for your help.

[WAWood]

@peon2t 

The MS-imposed 1909 upgrade block is not due to drivers; instead, it is due to incompatible hardware.  You might have Conexant audio, and that would be considered incompatible.  So, waiting on newer HP drivers is wasting your time.

What you can try, which will require some work on your part, is doing something called an In-Place Upgrade using Windows media you download and create yourself.  That might bypass the hardware block because the Windows version would be new.

To do this, you need to do the following:

1) Use Macrium Reflect to create a backup on a large USB stick or external drive (see below)
2) Use this link to download and create Win10 install media: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
3) insert that 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.

[peon2t]

@WAWood

Thank you for your reply. 

However the "inplace upgrade" you suggested fails with exactly the same error code that I already mentioned.

[WAWood]

@peon2t 

That was the "easy" way to upgrade -- as it keeps your stuff intact.  The "hard way" is to use the same media to do a clean-install, which basically erases everything from the drive in the process.  I do this once a year to clean out the crud from my Windows setup, but it takes me hours to do the prep, as I have a spreadsheet with detail info on every app and driver installed, and the better part of 2 full days to reinstall and reconfigure all the apps and drivers.  It is not something I recommend to folks because of all the work involved.

If you want to do that, you would need to do the following:

1) Make a record of all the apps you installed because you will have to reinstall them

2) Make a record of all your settings because you will lose them

3) Copy off all your personal data because it will be overwritten

4) Use this information to make a backup of the HP drivers, because they will be overwritten: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/68426-backup-restore-device-drivers-windows-10-a.html

Then, when all that is done, boot from the Win10 media and run the install.

When you get back to a working desktop, insert the driver backup media you created and restore the HP drivers.

Then, you have to reinstall all your apps and do any updates needed to make them current.

You will also have to go in and redo all your settings to match what you have recorded.

As you can see, this is a LOT of work -- which is why I do not recommend it.

[peon2t]

@WAWood

Thank you for your reply.

I do know how to perform a fresh install of Windows 10 but for the reasons you mentioned yourself it is not what I want to do.

So what I´d actually like is getting the problem resolved. That error message must have a cause and I figure that HP should know that cause and offer a solution.

[WAWood]

@peon2t 

You're presuming too much and laying the solution at the feet of the wrong people. 

HP has nothing to do with MS blocking feature updates -- that is entirely done by MS.  HP also has no way to remove those blocks -- as once again, that is entirely done by MS. 

So, waiting for HP to fix this is not going to be effective.

[peon2t]

Maybe I have to clarify: It´s not that the update is "blocked" (like on those PCs where it says that they are incopatible with the update) - Windows even tries to install the upgrade by itself, resulting in a loop of upgrade installation -> failure -> reverting of the upgrade. So this wastes a lot of time on every reboot when this happens. And of course in a few months there will be no more security updates for 1909, right?

Besides this I don´t presume that much... I just went with what the poeple over at Microsoft said: That this upgrade error numbers are caused by incompatible/faulty drivers and that the vendor has to provide updated drivers.

Of course I can go back there now and say that over at HP they blamed Microsoft... will certainly be a nice blame game. It just wont resolve the problem, I guess. Somebody needs to know what actually can be done, right?