Can't install Windows Creator update on 17-g121wm.

[Warwagon1979]

Yep. At this point, if you want the creator's update you'll have to clean install and live without ethernet for a while. The good news is Wireless works like a charm.

[Warwagon1979]

I guess if you are bored and feeling adventurous you could try disabling the Ethernet Card in the device manager and try the creators update upgrade again.

[rangan2510]

I got in touch with the person I personally know at HP, sent him an elaborate mail covering the issues along with a list of devices that I know are affected. He forwarded the message to the technical team and told me that they are aware of the issue. 

As of now, I am expecting a call from HP so that I can tell them in detail what is wrong. I cant get through the toll free phone support since the devices are out of warranty. I detest how they support team treats people whose devices are out of warranty. 

[syllinx22]

Thanks for contacting hp. Glad they know about it and might fix it. If all the laptops affected are old then I worry they won't fix the issue.

With tpm hidden it let me install by booting from the flash drive. Ran windows update and rebooted. All devices show they are working in device manager. I do get the poping sound when audio plays but I haven't been able to check the network port. WIfi works fine. Thanks for mentiong turing off TPM. I wish I had money to tip.

[rangan2510]

Have you tried installing the audio driver from HP's site? And can you post a screenshot of the device manager window? That will help a lot.

[rangan2510]

Bravely started a clean install. Everything was going fine. Now it seems to be stuck at the "Getting Ready" phase. The hard drive LED is steadily glowing. I hope it is doing some meaningful work there.

[rangan2510]

Booted up. Everything went fine. Ethernet working out of the box, even during setup. Device manager looks fine. Has a bunch of unknown devices. Let me see what happens when I install the drivers.

[rangan2510]

Okay, got everything working. Here is what I did for a clean install

1. Tweak BIOS settings (F.41A)

First, hide and disable TPM, disable virtualization, change boot config to Legacy from UEFI. Disable all devices from BIOS for booting other than USB and internal HDD, put USB first.

2. Download the ISO from Microsoft by using HeiDoc's tool. Put it on a USB drive using Rufus.

3. Restart your PC, disconnect all unnecessary peripherals.

I had the mouse and USB flash drive connected. You will get a prompt to boot from USB. Proceed with it and go to the setup. Do not format the C:. Leave it as it is. Your old files will get into a "Windows.old" folder.

4. Install windows. If you are lucky, everything will go fine now. It may appear that your PC is stuck, but let it work. The install takes a while, unlike the other versions of Windows.

5. When you are greeted with Cortana during the OOBE, plug in the LAN cord, it works with the default driver. Use a local account for now.

6. Log into Windows. Windows Update will now download drivers. You will have to do a couple of restarts. Do not install any other driver now unless Windows Update is done. Windows Update will install OEM drivers only, not generic ones. Most drivers will succeed in one or two tries, a few will fail.

7. Windows will BSOD with some drivers. Windows will try and download the drivers again and again, causing more BSODs. Get the Windows Update Show/Hide tool. Using this, block all the drivers that are causing problems. 

For me, there were two realtek drivers, one of which was for the LAN, and another was the HP PS/2 keyboard driver. If you have these drivers, uninstall them using device manager and restart. Windows will automatically roll back to the out-of-the-box drivers that work just fine.

8. Now, install the AMD Radeon Settings Software and AMD Chipset software from support.amd.com. These will take care of most of the "unknown devices" from device manager. Also, these are more updated than HP's software, and works better. 

9. Next, install your audio driver from HP. This will take care of the audio issue too. You can also enable Virtualization now.

10. Restart and run Windows Update one more time to see that no conflicting drivers are being downloaded. Else use the WUSH Tool again.

This is just a workaround. An upgrade is not yet possible from Windows 10 v1067. But a clean install seems to work fine for me with the tweaked settings. Also, you cannot use UEFI, Secure Boot, TPM and all those fancy things.

I am still waiting on HP for some response on this. 

[Warwagon1979]

Hmm.. Maybe that was my problem. I installed using Secureboot / UFI. Maybe that's why the ethernet card didn't work?

[syllinx22]

I highly recommend just getting the sound drivers from the realtek website. Mine show they are from 2017 now and it is crystal clear with no popping. If you have tried this already.