Upgrading Windows 7 To Windows 10 Issues

I ran into several issues recently where I was helping someone to upgrade few of their PCs from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro, so I thought I will share my experience.

Following are some of the things I did prior to running the update and most of the machines I was able to update without any issues, but few ran into issues.

I made sure PCs are updated with the latest windows updates.
I uninstalled apps which weren’t needed.
I ran disk clean up to delete the temp files, old windows updates, and system files.
I used CCleaner (free version) to clean up any residual files / broken reg keys etc.

How Was I Upgrading?

Download Windows Media Creation Tool and follow through the instructions. https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows
It will tell you if there are any Applications that won’t be compatible with Windows 10 so it’s better to cancel the upgrade process, uninstall that Application, reboot, and then kick off the upgrade process again.
Upgrade process will reboot your machine several times and the time it takes to upgrade varies from machine to machine depending on its specs and resources available on them.

Issues:

I ran into some issues on some machines. I got the following error message and after that it started to undo the changes and reverted to Windows 7.

I tried pretty much all the possible fixes listed on the following sites. The last resort was to install Windows 10 clean without upgrading.

https://wethegeek.com/how-to-fix-windows-10-undoing-changes-made-to-your-computer/
https://www.technipages.com/windows-10-undoing-changes-made-to-your-computer
https://www.repairwin.com/fix-system-registry-contains-invalid-paths-in-windows-10-upgrade/

Fixes That Worked for Me

I downloaded Windows 10 ISO (Latest one Version 21H1) and ran the set up. I was able to upgrade few PCs that failed previously.
I downloaded older version of Windows 10 version 1909 and ran the set up. I was able to upgrade few PCs that failed previously. Run Windows Update to update it to the latest version after it was upgraded to Windows 10.
I downloaded Windows 10 1607 version ISO and ran the setup and that worked for one machine and it failed all previous version set ups.

Note: You can download free version of Magic ISO to extract the ISO.

Windows Updates might fail with the following error. You will need Windows update Assistant to upgrade to the latest version of Windows 10 in some cases.

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