A couple of weeks ago, Windows 10 Feature Update 1709 was released, and for the second time I met some problems during the process.

My investigations detected 3 possible solutions:

• do something before and after the update
• download the new W10 version by using MS media download tool
• do a clean installation.

Luckily my problems were fixed by applying the first one.

Preparations to apply the update

The first step is to verify how much free space we have in our system disk.

Generally, 20Gb should be enough, but I always do the following tasks:

Step 1:
If you have configured the swap file into a different disk, give a look in your system disk root folder if a previous feature update has left an orphan ‘pagefile.sys’. You can delete it by using File Explorer.

Step 2:
Clean the user’s temporary files by using cleanmgr.exe.  Type it from Cortana.

Step 3:
Open a Command Prompt window with administrative access rights, and use it with the following tasks:

Step 4:
Clean the system temporarily and all other unneeded files by using cleanmgr.exe. This usually reduces your system component store folder usually by several Gb.

Step 5:
(if needed) disable the hibernation by typing the following command:

powercfg -h off

Step 6:
Run a component store analysis to fix it if required by typing:

dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore

and clean it if needed:

dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

Step 7:
Disable System Recovery on the system disk, because the feature update doesn’t use it, and it takes several Gb.

Step 8:
The final step is to disable your antivirus right before engaging the Windows update. This will usually prevent errors like 0x80262006, 0x80264018…. or fake reboots.

At this point, your PC shall be ready for a smooth Feature Update.

Usually, apply it by using:

• normal Windows Update
• if any problem, download and run: Windows 10 Update Assistant from Microsoft site.
• if any problem, download and run: Media Creation Tool from Microsoft site.

Post-installation steps

If everything will go fine, you have only to check the following steps:

• turn on antivirus again,
• disable hibernation (if you need it) (see Step 5),
• delete any orphan swap file (see Step 1),
• restore system protection on the system disk (see Step 7),

Leave some day to verify that everything is running fine, and then do the following steps:

• remove any auxiliary files by running a system file cleanup (see Step 4).
• cleanup the component store (see Step 6).

 

NOTE: you can easily do many of these steps by using sys_minion.