Fixing failed Windows 10 Anniversary Update and DISM & ReFS registry hack

This blog post covers some issues I run into while installing Windows 10 Anniversary Update on one of my machines and some other issues I discovered/fixed in the process 🙂

As I twitted earlier that for me Windows 10 Anniversary update failed on one of my home machines:

Machine was really low on space on C drive and installation of update failed with error code 0x800705b4. Once I realized it I tried to use available option to move download folder to another drive and freed up enough of space on C drive – but in spite of this I kept getting this 0x800705b4 error. Back then there was no MSFT KB on this and after a while Windows Update even stopped to offer Anniversary Update to me. So I give up temporarily.

Yesterday I decided to give it another try and as Anniversary Update was no longer offered via Windows Update I downloaded Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant from support.microsoft.com:

Once downloaded, this tool provides you with wizard style UI for upgrade:

This tool allowed me to re-try installation of Anniversary Update, but I end up with the same 0x800705b4 error. This time Google I some how come across to an official MSFT KB dedicated to this error. I guess I wasn’t able to find this useful KB earlier as I tried to search something specifically applicable to Anniversary Update whereas it was rather generic Windows Update error.

First suggestion from above mentioned KB was “sfc /scannow” executed from elevated command prompt seemingly helped me, but I’ve got credentials prompt at update installation stage. At this point I decided to give a call to MSFT support, or rather I opt out to request call back from them which I received relatively quickly – and it helped me to move on further. I was explained that I have to activate my Windows using my Windows 8.1 key I had by means of issuing the following command:

slui 3

This brings you the following Windows which allows you to activate your Windows system:

Once activation succeeded I was advised to start update process from scratch, and I also get a recommendation to use update from installation media to speed up this process. I opt out to continue with Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant.

But alas once I did activation I run into the same error and “sfc /scannow” was not able to fix it, and I proceed to suggestion #2 from MSFT KB – use DISM to  to fix Windows Update corruption errors. And solution is to run this:

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

KB also states that you have to use repair from source here but I decided to try online repair first and run into the following problem:

Error message here is rather non descriptive and give little hints what is wrong for real. And I realized that I already struggled with this back when I tried to play with Windows To Go and give up on this. But since then answer to this appeared in the Internet:

http://appuals.com/best-fix-error-50-dism-does-not-support-servicing-windows-pe-with-the-online-option/

Essentially this error caused by misplaced MiniNT key in registry which makes DISM thing that you try to service Windows PE installation. And truth to be told I have nobody to blame for that except me as I did a little unsupported trick to enable ReFS support on Windows 8.1 long time ago and I seen some other issues caused by this unsupported registry hack. So take away here is that it you use this enable ReFS trick either enable it to format drives, then remove registry key or if for some strange reason you may want to keep it be prepared to issue like non-working Windows Restore and this DISM error 50.

Anyhow once I removed MiniNT key DISM cleanup-image worked well for me and I was able to install Anniversary update, albeit not without another minor glitch which cause disproportionate amount of fuss in the Internet (example) – look like people don’t see how Anniversary Update being rolled out smoothly on 80%+ of super-diverse hardware base and moaning about individual issues with random configurations/old hardware saying that MSFT does a poor job here. Just for your reference on two other machines I have this update installed without slightest issues automatically (and one of them was really old Dell desktop with customized configuration). Glitch I’m talking about is that during update installation on a first boot I got an endless spinning circle on a black background and being experienced with this I waited up to 4 hours, then looked and the interned where a lot of folks report that it was necessary to unplug different Bluetooth USB dongles to get around this issue, and some even report that they were guided by MSFT to do 3-times hard power off to go to recovery mode… 🙁 Just in case I removed my Logitech Unifying receiver from USB port and waited a bit more (~15 mins or so), then just powered down my desktop and switched it on again – system started just fine.

So with a bit of help here and there my entire house hold now runs Windows 10 Anniversary update (2 desktops & 1 laptop). I hope this blog post may help those who run into similar issues.