Overlay/repair/in place upgrade - no "upgrade" option

[fxdmusic]

Interesting issue. Have a Win7 x64 ultimate oem box, lost the original key, replaced motherboard, cpu, bought a retail copy and key, used the key to activate to get the nag screens without using a program to circumvent. This was a couple years ago.

Recently...

I can't do an in place upgrade/repair. The option for "upgrade" never shows up. It will allow me to install on any of my hdd or in a new folder on my ssd. The system as a whole is usable and has no major issue that I can see other than this one. It may also be notable that the installation DOES NOT check for updates before moving on to the license agreement and partition check.

It will not upgrade to 10, either. It gets as far as setting up temporary files then crashes to the desktop. The reason behind the 7 reinstallation was to correct any issues with the OS that may be causing the 10 installation issue.

Any ideas? I've done the basics, malware free, chkdsk, my checksur log is pretty f-ed up for windows updates. I'm thinking that's probably not the cause, however.

 

[Night Hawk]

Hello fxdmusic Welcome to the Seven Forums! No upgrade to repair option?

Well I won't recommend a repair of the present installation but seeing a fresh copy of 7 go on and grabbing SP1 required if you are planning to move onto to W10! Presently I have a working dual boot of both 7 and 10 across two separate hard drives where the second first seeing a clone of the previous 7 host drive now set as the second in 10's BCD boot order had failed on the spot to see the upgrade go on! What?

Following the failed first few attempts where the clone was thought to be the problem preventing the upgrade from completion when just after the first restart once the setup files had been copied to the drive from the usb installation key the Media Creation tool first used and later a 3rd party program for seeing another iso single not combination 32/64bit for 10 Pro that went onto a 16gb flash drive but seeing both 32bit and 64bit downloads the 32bit for a planned VM project later it wasn't either usb key or the second fresh install of 7 to the second drive.

But?! it was discovered that two storage and backup drives were what were seeing the newer version's boot files and temporary set up folders placed on them! Do you have any other hard drives internal or external plugged in while trying to upgrade? Unplug those before trying again!

Before I ended up taking a good look at the clean install guide seen at Ten Forums one of the other sites seen at Windows 10 Tutorials[2]=Installation%20and%20Setup where you will find a list of guides there for clean install, upgrade install, how to download and save 10 as an ISO image file, how to make up the usb key, etc. I had even tried seeing the upgrade go over the host drive's original 7 installation there but glad it failed before realizing having any non OS drives plugged during the upgrade or clean install process was a disaster in the making!

One other recommendation for you would be to get over to TF there for additional help as well as review of the guides since that forum is intended for 10 support. I think you will find that a good number of people have found themselves in familiar circumstances when trying to get 10 to go on!

 

[fxdmusic]

I appreciate your input, I have considered these options and appreciate the time that went into your post. I'm really trying to figure out the root cause.

No upgrade option, only clean install.

Setup does not even check for updates or give the option to do so. To me, there must be a trigger to not display the update or upgrade options.

 

[Night Hawk]

If you bought a 7 full version disk and even with only an upgrade dvd you can still see a clean install of 7 go on since it sounds like it's in need of it anyways. The description you are providing suggests that the present 7 install has grow too buggy!

Here with the latest version I elected to put 10 on a second drive in order to set up a now working dual boot with 7 first as the host drive but later realized the 10 drive had to be set that way while both can still run as stand alone OS drives. The second drive was to see a clean install of 7 in order to perform the 10 upgrade over the temp 7 with note SP1 or Service Pack 1 being a requirement! If you by chance never did get SP1 on there that would stall the works fast!

During the initial upgrade the 10 installer recognises the 7 product key and installation as genuine and keeps a record on the activation servers of those two things as well as the system configuration. When the first upgrade got buggy a second one stablized things a bit but still had to eventually see the clean install just seen to! Upon reaching the desktop without having entered any product key the clean install was found activated as it detected the upgrade had been apparently.

For the first 10 install you will need to get 7 on fresh either on the present drive or a second as well as unplug any other non OS drives to prevent hangups! The clean copy of 7 will give you plenty to work if and when you get the 10 media created being recommended to first use that option and save the ISO disk image download to a decided on folder to receive it. From there you have the option of running the tool again for either seeing the usb installation key made up with a 4gb flash drive or try the immediate upgrade option which hasn't been the better move unless 10 is found in the Windows upgrades and downloaded where you would then run through the upgrade process.

 

[Ztruker]

Upgrade has to be run from a booted Windows 7 system. Insert the DVD and it will either autostart or you can run setup.exe to start it.

 

[Night Hawk]

Well the problem being seen is not seeing the Upgrade option only the one for seeing a Custom Install when running the setup.exe or autorun there it seems. The description indicated the present copy of 7 is bautched up royally where it appears there can one choice for trying the upgrade to repair if you can get to the desktop in Safe Mode.

The attempt with that idea would first be to open an elevated command prompt since Safe Mode generally won't allow executables for any type of installer to run and you would need administrative permissions to get things going. Otherwise it sounds like the system registry is too messed up to be even worth the attempt.

You would then need to do as I did and see to it that a clean copy of 7 goes on grabbing SP1 along the way in order to upgrade over that. Be advised that while still seeing a nice clean install of 7 go on for the planned 10/7 dual boot across two separate drives the upgrade of 10 over the fresh 7 install ended up boogered! I ended up performing an upgrade to repair second upgrade install to correct many of the problems others have been running into and saw favorable results. I ran with that for the first week to get familiar with 10 before seeing the clean install go on last weekend and no problems since!

I'm sharing this information here for you people to understand that upgrade installs are never any match for a nice clean full install as far as seeing the best possible results. MS knows that as well and why that once you seen to an upgrade install you are then able to turn around once 10 is activated and tend to a full clean install which solves a ton of potential issues!