Windows 7: Upgrade from Vista to Win 7 failed - rolled back - why ?

I ran the upgrade of Win 7 build 7000 over Vista 32 bit, and everything seemed to proceed fine until it ultimately ended up telling me the installation failed and it needed to roll back to the old operating system. Which it did, and I'm back to a functional Vista system.



Where do I find the error log/reason why the upgrade did not succeed? There was no error code or detailed message as to why.

64 bit over 32 bit?
No more disk space?

I had the same problem on my tablet, I ended up having to do the full install of 7000 not the upgrade. I even restored a base VistaSP1 image from WHS backups. Didn't get any details, I assume it's driver/hardware related.

After the install my SATA controller was missing one driver, and my 3G card is non-op.

Unless I missed something, Win 7 upgrades 32-bit to 32-bit and doesn't provide an option to go from 32-bit to 64-bit in an upgrade situation. (MSFT never did allow upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit and I don't think Windows 7 will be any different)

Plenty of disk space. Removed the couple programs it didn't like in the upgrade advisor.

It's a Dell Optiplex GX270 (old P4 2.8Ghz) which is common hardware, no special hardware requirements there. Heck, I loaded Windows 7 on a new Dell Studio 1737 laptop the other day with the latest and greatest hardware and the install went flawlessly.

I'm sure there's a log to be found somewhere ... I see Windows 7 left behind a couple of big fat "$" temp directories after the rollback.

I found this mentioned in another thread.... so I'll take a look at setupact.err when I get home tonight ...

I found a setupact.log and setuperr.log

setupact.log has the log of the rollback
setuperr.log is blank

... so it's not giving me any clue as to why it rolled back ...

Since most of the cases of upgrading were successful, there must be something it doesn't like on your system set up.

If you have the patience for retries, you could uninstall all cd-mounting software such as daemon tools, nero etc...
Also , roll back every driver in case there's one particular that crashes the install...

You should not be upgrading anyway, it's only a BETA and it would make sense to dual boot with Vista instead, why not just create a partition and start a fresh install avoiding any incompatibilities that go with an upgrade.

I am running Vista 64 Ultimate. Not because I want to - because the Windows 7 upgrade has failed, several times.

I ran the advisor several times, it cam up 100% clean.

I removed my AV just to be sure, had my disk and other drivers on a USB stick - and it still fails. It gets right to the end, after all the steps on the upgrade, after about 2 hours, boots into Windows 7, and then reverts back to Vista 64.

Not surprisingly MS has no support for this, customers are supposed to "use MS credit card pay service" to help fix their broken product.

Fortunately my company has an MS support contract and allowed me to submit my case (even though it is my home PC).

This has turned out to be a continuing adventure. Slow response times drag efforts out for days. They sent a diagnostic program to gather data - then block the 7MB file it produces. They send me an upload link - but forget the password. Finally they get the file, 2 days ago, and I have heard nothing.

If this is MS flagship OS I am not impressed. I heard all the good press and want to upgrade, but Windows 7 will not upgrade.

I know a "clean install" __may__ be an option -- or it may just fail after formatting away my system drive.

As far as I am concerned this is just more of MS BS as usual.

Amen to that.....

I have Vista Home Premium 64 bit......just tried ( 3 times) to upgrade to Windows 7 with the upgrade disc that Microsoft sent me via mail.

Yes...the upgrade is for Windows 7 64 bit for those of you who are wondering. Same exact problem. Install gets to about 42% complete and then says that it's unable to complete and will now revert back to Vista (...oh.....yea! )

This problem and the way that Microsoft is handling it (...or NOT handling it) is vaguely reminiscient of the much loved...
"Your Display Driver has Stopped Working But Has Successfully Recovered" nonsense. Microsoft and its minions constantly blamed hardware as the issue...until Microsoft eventually released a fix for it on their support website. Convenient, eh?

Well...the only time Microsoft ever seems to get things right is when someone sues. Maybe it's time for people to organize for a class action suit. I know that between the cost of Vista 64, the Windows 7 upgrade, and the countless hours I've WASTED trying to fix a product that should've NEVER been unleashed on the public, I'd say M$ owes me one.

Hey, Microsoft......ya know those cute MAC commercials we keep seeing?!?!? They're starting to make sense.