Cannot force update to Windows 10 from Windows 7 Pro (Guest)

[mpack]

Hello All!

Hope everyone is doing well! I am having a hard time upgrading to Windows 10 from my Windows 7 Professional 64 bit Guest virtual machine. The problem that I am having is that the Windows 10 icon in the lower right corner won't show up. I have every single update installed including KB3035583 and KB2952664. I have tried all three methods in the "win10fix_full" file on Dropbox that one person made and no change. It finds the two updates that are necessary for the install of Windows 10 which is weird. I even tried forcing the update by typing in " wuauclt.exe /updatenow" after I clicked check for updates. That didn't work either. I am currently running in a Virtual Box guest with a genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. I will post pictures of my settings for my virtual machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a bunch!

Bracken

Summary of the upgrading solution once you get the icon: (1) Change the OS Version in your VMs settings to "Windows 10 (xx bit"). You need to shut down the VM to do this, not suspend. (2) Inside the guest, uninstall the VirtualBox Guest Additions and reboot the guest - this is important because Win10 objects to the VBox graphics driver for some reason (prolly because MS didn't write it). (3) Upgrade. Any problems you have beyond that should be raised with Microsoft.

[michaln]

I fear that for getting answers to Windows Update problems you'll have to ask at some Windows-oriented forum, or ask Microsoft. Is there any reason to think the problem has anything to do with VirtualBox?

All I can say is that my Win7 VM does show the icon, and I didn't do anything special...

[scottgus1]

I seem to remember a couple of posts on this subject where a report of why a guest was not getting the offer to update to Win10 was generated by the Win10 updater. I did a search for get "windows 10 kb number" and got this link which may help you: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 65b?auth=1

[loukingjr]

FWIW, whether you have the icon or not, multiple users have posted that the check to see if you can run Windows 10 fails because of the VB video driver. Why i don't know.

[gsavstrom]

I actually got my "Get Windows 10"-icon offering me the update, but like a number of users I got the message that the video driver wasn't compatible.
I searched google and actually found the solution on a microsoft-related webpage where it is described how to actually "force" the upgrade.

- But since I registered just to post the solution I do not yet qualify for posting links. It'll have to wait until my next post...

[BillG]

I upgraded a Windows 7 vm to Windows 10 recently. Here is a checklist of what I would do if I faced this problem again to increase the chances of it working first go.

Download the Windows 10 ISO using the Microsoft media creation tool (free download from Microsoft) to the host.

Check the guest OS.
1.Ensure that it is activated.
2. Ensure that it has 10G free storage. If not, expand the .vdi and the OS partition before you start.
3. Uninstall the guest additions.
4. Shutdown the guest.

Check the vm settings.
1. On the General tab, change the version to Windows 10.
2.On the System tab, ensure that the top boot entry is Hard Disk.
3. On the Storage tab, attach the Windows 10 ISO to the CD/DVD.

Start the vm and when it boots, run the setup.exe from the attached ISO.
After the upgrade completes, reinstall the guest additions.

Remember that the free upgrade is like to like. If you have 32-bit Windows Pro it will upgrade to 32-bit Windows 10 Pro and so on.
If you want to change any of that you will need to do it after the upgrade is complete and the Win 10 machine activates.

[mpack]

This topic does not belong in "Windows Hosts". Moving it to "Windows Guests", and making it a temporary sticky.

[enilkciw]

I did all this but when I run setup.exe it asks for a key. I thought the Win 10 upgrade was free???

I upgraded a Windows 7 vm to Windows 10 recently. Here is a checklist of what I would do if I faced this problem again to increase the chances of it working first go.

Download the Windows 10 ISO using the Microsoft media creation tool (free download from Microsoft) to the host.

Check the guest OS.
1.Ensure that it is activated.
2. Ensure that it has 10G free storage. If not, expand the .vdi and the OS partition before you start.
3. Uninstall the guest additions.
4. Shutdown the guest.

Check the vm settings.
1. On the General tab, change the version to Windows 10.
2.On the System tab, ensure that the top boot entry is Hard Disk.
3. On the Storage tab, attach the Windows 10 ISO to the CD/DVD.

Start the vm and when it boots, run the setup.exe from the attached ISO.
After the upgrade completes, reinstall the guest additions.

Remember that the free upgrade is like to like. If you have 32-bit Windows Pro it will upgrade to 32-bit Windows 10 Pro and so on.
If you want to change any of that you will need to do it after the upgrade is complete and the Win 10 machine activates.

[loukingjr]

I did all this but when I run setup.exe it asks for a key. I thought the Win 10 upgrade was free???

Windows 10 is a free upgrade from Windows 7 - Windows 8.1. You still need the Windows product key if you aren't updating in place using the Media Center Tool. Just copy the product key from the guest you are trying to update.

[enilkciw]

I did all this but when I run setup.exe it asks for a key. I thought the Win 10 upgrade was free???

Nevermind. I used the media creation tool and it's installing now...

[Clay123]

Maybe my experience will help some continuing to experience problems upgrading.

Here are the steps I followed (based upon hints in this forum, other forums and my own experimentation) and the VirtualBox settings that, finally, permitted the installation of a Windows 10 Professional (32-bit) upgrade to my Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit) system for my old mid-2007 iMac. I know what you're thinking people: "It's high time he upgrade his hardware!"

My notes aren't clear on this point but Guest Additions had either been removed before the upgrade attempt or Guest Additions had been removed and Windows 7 restarted in Safe Mode (via the F8 key during boot) so that Guest Additions could be reinstalled with the Direct3D Support box checked. I had experimented with numerous settings and install methods throughout the last week and lost track of some of the details.

I used a DVD onto which I had burned a copy of the Windows 10 (32-bit) .iso file downloaded via my Mac from the official website. The DVD wasn't inserted into the iMac until Windows 7 was running. Incidentally, all my "mucking about" throughout the week had somehow invalidated my copy of Windows 7. I had to go through the steps to re-validate it before attempting the upgrade.

DETAILS
Host: iMac mid-2007, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB DDR2 SDRAM, OS 10.10.4
Guest: Windows 7 Ultimate, 32-bit, all updates
Virtualization: Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager 5.0.0
VirtualBox Settings:
System: Motherboard Base Memory 2261 MB; Boot Order Hard Disk, Optical; Chipset ICH9; Processor I/O APIC enabled; Processor 1 CPU (might have upgraded faster had I used "2 CPU:); Execution Cap 100%; PAE/NX enabled; Acceleration VT-x/AMD-V enabled, Nested Paging enabled
Display: Video Memory 30 MB; Remote Desktop Server not enabled; Video Capture not enabled
Storage: Controller SATA Port 0 Windows 7 (32bit).vdi (Normal, 50.29 GB)
Audio: Host Driver CoreAudio; Controller Intel HD Audio

[macke]

Hi here aren't findings on this subject after trying all ways to get Windows 10 working. I have XP and a legit Win7 upgrade disc. I installed XP on a new VM and then upgraded to 7 and tried to upgrade to 10 using the instruction given above. It failed with some odd error about hardware. I then created another VM and did a clean install of WIN 10 using the WIN 7 upgrade keycode and VOILA! it worked. So the easiest way is install 7, register it online with Microshaft, and clean install 10 on a new VM. Don't bother trying to upgrade.
Macke

[jayatnashville]

OK, so I've tried the step by step instructions posted and quoted from BillG below. The problem with these instructions for me is:

A) My host is a Mac. So I'm not able to use Microsoft media creation tool. Instead I downloaded the Windows 10 ISO from the Microsoft TechBench. (I think that solved the media creation tool ISO issue.)
B) Using Bill's VM settings step three below I can't make that happen. I go to the storage tab and I click the "+" sign beside the SATA controller. I then click the "Choose existing disk" button. I'm not given the opportunity to choose the ISO file to attach to the hard drive. I've tried the same steps using the IDE controller instead of the SATA controller, but have the same results. ISO simply isn't recognized as an attachable file type.

The Microsoft download icon in the system tray won't load because it says my CPU is not supported and it also mentions the same problem with the graphics adapter that others have referenced. (Interestingly though is says this even though I've uninstalled the guest extension package as instructed) So I'm using the steps to use the ISO file to force the upgrade but that's not working either. Any ideas?

Jay
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[quote="BillG"]
Download the Windows 10 ISO using the Microsoft media creation tool (free download from Microsoft) to the host.

Check the guest OS.
1.Ensure that it is activated.
2. Ensure that it has 10G free storage. If not, expand the .vdi and the OS partition before you start.
3. Uninstall the guest additions.
4. Shutdown the guest.

Check the vm settings.
1. On the General tab, change the version to Windows 10.
2.On the System tab, ensure that the top boot entry is Hard Disk.
3. On the Storage tab, attach the Windows 10 ISO to the CD/DVD.

Start the vm and when it boots, run the setup.exe from the attached ISO.
After the upgrade completes, reinstall the guest additions.

[DdB]

First: the time to upgrade to W10 "at no cost" has long expired. Be aware of eventual licensing issues!
Second: At the time, i was interested to check W10 out, and thus upgraded. Among the things, that initially prevented a proper upgrade:

It is necessary to change to Windows10 in the properties of the VM BEFORE the upgrade
I vaguely remember to have manually changed one additional setting beforehand via commandline (not sure, which one it was)
During the period, i had to download a full installer CD instead of using the integrated upgrade process, mount it and proceed from the Setup (while still in Windows)
Some minor things were left to do afterwards (like reinstall guest additions, and some drivers)
I decided to revert mainly due to the forced information leaking from Windows10, which cannot be remedied as some forums falsely claim.
And after picking the option to revert to the old version, it was completely broken. I was happy, i still had a working backup!

[mpack]

First: the time to upgrade to W10 "at no cost" has long expired.

You should notice that you're adding to a topic whose last post was 14 months ago when the MS offer had not expired.

Locking this obsolete topic. If you want to update a Win7/8/8.1 VM to Win10 then download the Win10 ISO, after changing the VM template version to Win10 as noted. Whether or not you can do the upgrade for free is a discussion you should have with Microsoft.