Upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 consumer preview freezes after first reboot at 88% install.

I have the TechNet 64-bit ISO version of Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I decided to upgrade my laptop from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 8 CP and keep the programs and settings. After the first reboot, it goes through several stages and then comes to the "Preparing" stage. That moves quickly, but at exactly 88%, the whole computer freezes and I have to reboot. After the reboot, the setup program successfully reverts back to Windows 7. Even if it didn't, I do have a system image of Windows 7 to revert to.

The laptop has an AMD A8 CPU with both a discrete and on-board GPU and a Blu-ray drive and 8GB of memory. Is there any way to determine what cause the upgrade to freeze and report it to Microsoft? Or at the very least, find out what caused the upgrade to freeze and work around it?

Hello Wade


Try removing all non essential devices that are connected to the machine such as your printer or any external usb device. You may also want to remove a couple sticks of memory from the machine and try the install again. How did you try installing Windows 8 Consumer Preview? If you downloaded an .ISO file and created the DVD that you're using to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview, you may want to check to see if the ISO image that was used to create the installation media didn't complete correctly or became corrupted. Let's check the Sha 1 hash for your .ISO to ensure that it matches the value that is displayed on the page linked below:
Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO images

 

To check the Sha 1 hash of your .ISO, please take a look at the information provided by Andre Da Costa in the answer of the thread that is linked below:
Windows 8 & HP Envy 15 Installation Issue!

 

If the Sha 1 hash does not match the value from the first link, try downloading the .ISO again from the first link above and then check the Sha 1 hash of the newly downloaded .ISO to ensure it matches the value given on that page.

 

Once you have a .ISO that matches the Sha 1 hash information, take a look at the information below for some suggestions for creating a bootable USB or burning a DVD:
"The easiest way to convert an ISO file to a DVD in Windows 7 is to use Windows Disc Image Burner. On a PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista, a third-party program is required to convert an ISO file into installable media—and DVD burning software often includes this capability. One option is the USB/DVD download tool provided by the Microsoft Store. You can also download Windows 8 Consumer Preview Setup, which includes tools that allow you to create a DVD or USB flash drive from an ISO file (Windows Vista or Windows 7 required)."
Source: Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO images

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Thanks for your response.

The SHA1 hash is the same as the one at the listed in the link you provided.

This is a laptop I'm using, so there is not any external device connected. I am going to try to uninstall some programs and drivers today. This laptop has the AMD A8 CPU plus an AMD video card, thus it has a discrete GPU and an external GPU. My next guess is to try uninstalling the video card driver because of the dual-GPU setup in the laptop.

By the way, I tried again several times and the upgrade process always freezes at 88%.

I still want to know if there is any way to determine what caused the upgrade to freeze and report it to Microsoft?  If it happened to me, it might happen to others, and I would like for such bugs to be removed from the RTM version.  Or at least have the upgrade adviser notify the user what will cause the upgrade to freeze so that the user must uninstall it.

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I tried uninstall the AMD video drivers and the upgrade process still did not complete. Since I have a full backup, I tried to do a fresh install and that just copied my documents. The install completed successfully. So there is something that is causing the upgrade to freeze and there has to be a way to find out what was the last thing the upgrade process did.



Anyway, I am going to go ahead and add another complaint. You can ignore this because this is a rant. GET RID OF THE METRO INTERFACE!!  It is beyond annoying to use with a mouse.  Where can I tell Microsoft to shelve Metro but good? It might be okay on a tablet, but on PC's, it is terrible. And that is being polite. Metro needs to be disabled by default on anything not using an ARM CPU. The lack of a start menu is why I hate OSX. If Metro is on by default in Windows 8, I will not be using it.

Thanks again.

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This thread applies to Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The thread is locked because the information in it might not be relevant or accurate as new versions of Windows 8 become available. Thanks, Microsoft Communities team.

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Last updated September 12, 2013 Views 376 Applies to: