"Jason" wrote in message
...

MS "support" gave up trying to help me install 1709 atop 1607. They could
not tell me if the issue was caused by hardware or software and
recommended a "clean" install - i.e., you get to install EVERYTHING again,
a daunting proposition. So I set the idea aside. Now, every time I boot,
Windows dutifully tries installing the update again. I think I can
throttle that behavior by disabling Update.

Today, with a fresh full image backup, I tried a clean install and it went
perfectly. So hardware isn't the issue (unless it's a driver that doesn't
cooperate but which didn't get 'touched' during my experiment).

So I'm tempted to re-open the case with MS with this new info. When they
gave up before, I asked what seemed like a reasonable question for which
they had no answer: at some point Setup quit. It quit for a reason. What's
the reason?? They couldn't say. Now I think hardware is NOT the reason and
wonder if it's worth another telephone marathon with them.

Jason,

Probably not worth the aggravation since they didn't have an answer before.
I'll add this tidbit which you can easily verify.

The fresh Win10 install, installed it's own (generic) drivers as needed to
get the system up and running but the driver(s) it installs may not be
optimal for the hardware. Drivers for graphics, NIC's, and USB devices are
usually generic until Win10 is fully updated which may update to OEM drivers
provided to MS. You should check the manufacturers site to see if they have
Win10 drivers and install those. If you have a problem with a driver from a
manufacturer, you can roll-back to the previous version.

Open Device Manager and open the tree for each device. On *each and every*
entry in the sub-tree menus, right-click and select "Update Driver
Software". The operative word is "each". There are a lot of entries but do
every one of them. Some may take a minute or two to verify.

What may have happened is that Win10 stayed with some drivers that were
previously installed during the upgrade tries and that could have been the
problem.

I wrote a post several months back about doing driver updates before
upgrading.

Bob S.