The process of installing and upgrading Windows 10 sometimes fails and indicates that your PC "can not be upgraded" but "no action is needed". Windows is experiencing the problem, but Microsoft is hiding the details. Here's how to identify and solve the problem yourself.
How to see "What needs your attention"
Microsoft must provide more descriptive error messages. The message we saw when trying to upgrade to May 2019 update of Windows 10 with Microsoft Update wizard was:
This PC can not be upgraded to Windows 10.
Your computer has a driver or service that is not ready for this version of Windows 10. No action is required. Windows Update will offer this version of Windows 10 automatically after the problem is resolved.
Microsoft said A message "No action required" means you do not have to do anything.
That's fine, but what if you do not want to wait? Why does not Windows tell us which "driver or service" is causing the problem? Windows 10 knows the problem, but does not display it here. You will need to retrieve it from the log files and resolve it yourself. Here's how to do it.
How to view Windows installation log files
The log files are hidden in this folder on your PC:
C: $ WINDOWS. ~ BT Sources Panther
To find them, open a File Explorer window and copy and paste this address into the address bar.
Look for a file name beginning with "CompatData_" and ending with ".xml" in this folder. If you see more than one, you must choose the most recent, the bottom one.
Open the file to view its contents. Without additional software, we recommend that you right-click the file and select Open With> Microsoft Edge.
You can also use Notepad ++ to see it well. Notepad and WordPad will display the file, but it will be difficult to read without the additional formatting provided by Edge and Notepad ++.
This file will explain why Windows will not be upgraded if you can decode it.
For example, to find incompatible drivers under "DriverPackages", use the following lines:
BlockMigration = "True"
This tells us that the drivers associated with the oem81.inf and oem80.inf files are incompatible with the new version of Windows. This is the reason why Windows refuses to upgrade.
But what are these files?
How to map a driver to an INF file
To learn more, you must open the INF files mentioned in the log. You will find them at:
C: Windows INF
Browse through the folder and look for the .inf files that you need to examine. In our case it is oem80.inf and oem81.inf.
You can double-click to open them in Notepad. Once you're done, you'll probably see a comment at the beginning of each file, explaining what it's all about.
In our case, we found that oem80.inf was "the Microsoft Print To PDF installation file" and oem81.inf was "the Microsoft XPS Document Writer installation file". In other words, the clean XPS and PDF printer drivers– part of Windows 10 itself – block the installation process for any reason.
How to solve your problem
Now that we know the problem, we can solve it by uninstalling the offending drivers.
In this case, we can do this by selecting Control Panel> Programs> Enable or Disable Windows Features. Uncheck "Microsoft Print to PDF" and "Microsoft XPS Document Writer" and click "OK". We will be able to reinstall them later, after the upgrade.
If other drivers or hardware applications were blocking the upgrade, you can uninstall them temporarily.
How to resume the upgrade process
You can expect to be able to click the "Refresh" button in the Windows 10 installation window after solving the problem. Sorry! It does not work. The Refresh button does nothing.
Instead, you will need to go back to the C: $ WINDOWS folder. ~ BT Sources Panther. Find the compatscancache.dat file and delete it.
After deleting this cache file, you can click the "Refresh" button and the installation process will continue.
"Something has happened"
Although this is the process that Microsoft has given us, it's not fantastic. As Brad Sams puts it, this error reporting system is a "cryptic disorder. The name of the "Panther" folder goes back to Windows Vista, it's his age!
The May 2019 update of Windows 10 was supposed to offer best installation error messagesbut we do not see them yet. At least, it's better than the old messages "Something has happened".
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