Windows 10 infinite boot loop after update

In one of my PC-s Windows 10 upgrade ended up not so well, at least for now.

After initial download, install progress and some reboots (I was not present  to count)  Windows 10 entered into state of infinite boot loop.

After Bios message Windows 10 logo appeared , screen flashed to black for a moment, logo appeared back with progress indicator and PC went to reboot.

Googling showed many similar cases with different causes and solutions.  First I hoped it to be BIOS settings issue, tried several options with no luck.

Next cause to look was drivers incompatibility issue, so solution would be to start in safe mode and remove suspicious drivers. There are several ways to do it in windows 10. Simplest is to do in inside booted up Windows 10 and restart.  Obviously this was not possible. Next is also very easy – during boot press Shift + F8. But I found hard way that it is not possible in case of SSD drive. Boot is just so fast that key press is never captured. So next option is to create recovery disk on another Windows 10 PC.

Here you can find detailed info about 4 Ways To Boot Into Safe Mode In Windows 10

So I booted up using freshly made Recovery USB Flash stick. Tried troubleshoot.

Advanced settings

But Startup Settings mentioned in referred article and shown on this screenshot was not present in my case. Probably Windows  10  upgrade was interrupted in too early stage.

 

So I tried Startup Repair, but it was also unable to fix anything. As all other options  stated that they are more or less destructive to current (old) installation I choose Go back to the previous build. The caption would look like it is about Windows 10 previous build, but after reboot I was back on old Windows 7. And it was not all – also the upgrade error message came up (sorry about poor image )

We could not install Windows 10

We’ve set your PC back to the way is was right before you started installing Windows 10

0xC1900101-0x40019

The installation failed in the SECOND_BOOT phase with an error during OOBE operation.

 

Googling showed it to be most likely driver(s) issue. Uninstalled all thirdparty drivers except D-LINK wifi. Also noticed that Windows 7 was now missing several latest updates. Not sure why/how these were revered. Applied all updates and started Windows 10 upgrade again. After downloading, downloaded files check and install media creation progress it ended up this time with message that upgrade can not be continued, try to reboot.

But same after reboot. Again internet search, found that can be both issue of low space and previous upgrade attempt files left on disk. Cleaning up disk did not make any changes. It was enough for this evening. At least got old operating system back. Will keep you posted how it goes.

PS. In one of try-failure steps the USB recovery disk went to configuration where it did not boot but forwarded boot to computer’s hard disk, so it looped again. Instead of recreating recovery disk i investigated files on it. The last modified was reagent.xml. Inside file  I did reset ScheduledOperation value to empty

<ScheduledOperation state=””/>

and it helped.