Upgrading ASUS CM6870 to Windows 10 Creators Edition or April 2018 release 1703, 1709, 1804 (RT3090 PCIe wireless card)

Hi Remaker,  

Thank you for posting your findings.

I have the same ASUS CM6870.  

Installing Win 10 or the Win 10 Anniversary edition onto this machine was no problem - until the Creators edition.  I'd get thru 75% of the installation and it would go to a black screen.

If I restarted, it would revert back to the Anniversary edition.

I wasn't using the ASUS wireless card, so removing it was not an issue for me.

Like yourself, once the wireless card was removed, the installation completed as expected.

I have to confess that I would never have thought to remove the wireless card to get the update installed.

Thank you again.

-Kevin N.

I'm glad it helped you. I was banging my head against the wall for days, so when I finally solved it I was hoping it might help at least one other person. Thanks for letting me know.

Hopefully, Microsoft will find the bug that causes the hang and update the installer.

I reinstalled the wireless card and used it without incident once the update finished. Go figure.

This was a pain for me, so I hope this helps someone.

I made 15 attempts to update my ASUS CM6870 from the Windows 10 Anniversary Edition to the Creators Edition (Creators Update), I *always* hung hard around 40 or 42% after the first system reboot, with the 'rolling' animation ground to a halt. This almost always points to a hardware problem.

I did everything to find the bad hardware! I disconnected all of the USB, ripped out all of the superfluous drivers, did a clean reboot, did a driver uninstall on my NVIDIA drivers using DDU, and uninstalled every program that had a funky driver like the VMWare standalone converter and my Cisco Anyconnect VPN. Nothing worked.

Each reboot reported "0xc1900101 - 0x30018 the installation failed in the FIRST_BOOT phase with an error during SYSPREP operation"

Digging into the clues from files left behind in C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther, I saw that the last thing before failure was a bunch of SPPNP messages which seems to be the SYSPREP driver loading phase. There were also a bunch of <NUL> characters at the end of the file. Some piece of hardware was refusing to play nice. I had painstakingly removed everything I could without opening the case.

Finally, based on various hints on forums, I cracked open the PC and pulled out my PCIe wireless card. Boom. Fully installed.

The Wireless card was a PCIe x1 in a PCI x16 slot if that matters, and it was the ASUS branded MediaTek Railink technologies RT3090 wireless card.

(PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_3090&SUBSYS_760111AD&REV_00)

Once the Creators Update was installed, I was able to reinstall the card without incident. Go figure.

An interesting cure for the problem.  I have been tearing my (scant) hair out over this for weeks.

Would uninstalling the wireless card have the same result?  This would save having to go into the case.

Thanks!

Hi David,

>Would uninstalling the wireless card have the same result?  This would save having to go into the case.

I tried disabling the card but *that* didn't work.  I did not try uninstalling it though.

For the time that it takes to pop the card out, I would just do that and be assured that the time spent on running the upgrade routine would not be wasted. (again)

Just as an FYI, when you remove the screws from the back of the machine, you just need to slide the cover back using the small handles on the back of each cover.

-Kevin N.

Uninstalling or disabling the card in Device Manager makes no difference; I tried everything before opening the computer case.

The wireless card has to be physically removed for the installation of the Creators Update to complete. This is presumably because the low level install process somehow interacts with the hardware regardless of how the high level parameters are set in the previous version of the OS.

Thank you very much, Kevin. I am going to try this tomorrow when I have time and I will be indebted to you for solving this.
Asus was no help.  I have been trying to get a Windows 10 Bios update from them (which is what Microsoft says we need) but their rep seemed massively unconcerned today.  I may have to re-think my next pc purchase as far as manufacturer is concerned.

Hi David,

Forum member 'Remaker' is the one to thank. :)

-Kevin N.

I want to thank you for your cure of this problem.  I followed your information and, after weeks of frustration, I finally installed Windows 10 1703 Creators Edition. 

David