How to fix problems with Windows 10 October Update

The Windows 10 October Update was a big one and took up an extra 30GB on our hard drive. Ours went very well and aside from a later issue that arose with Windows Backup which I’ll cover next time, it was a faultless upgrade.

Not everyone was so lucky though. A few people have been in contact with us here at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey with a few problems with the update. We managed to fix them all and here is what we did. Try them yourself and see how you get on. We are always here to help if it doesn’t go to plan.

This is our process for performing a system upgrade. It works well for us and it should work well for you too.

Why should you backup your data before a Windows 10 update?

You should always make a backup before any computer maintenance, especially a Windows 10 update, to ensure you can restore your computer to its previous state if issues arise. To do this, save your backup to a different hard drive or use OneDrive for critical files. Additionally, ensure you have enough free space on your C: drive (16GB for 32-bit, 20GB for 64-bit, though often closer to 30GB) by using Disk Cleanup for both regular and system files. Finally, turn off your antivirus and malware scanning apps before the upgrade, as they can interfere with file operations and prevent a smooth update.

Once you have backed up, make sure you have enough free space on your main C: drive to handle the update. It requires 16GB for the 32-bit version and 20GB for the 63-bit version. It used closer to 30GB for ours but those are the official figures.

1. Right click your C: drive and select Disk Cleanup.
2. Check the boxes next to anything with significant size listed on the right.
3. Select OK to perform the cleanup.
4. Go back to Disk Cleanup once complete and select Clean up system files.
5. Select any files with significant size and select OK.

Finally, turn off your antivirus and any malware scanning apps you may have. These tend to lock down files and try to control what is read and written on the disk. Turning them off before the upgrade can make a big difference.

Now perform your upgrade. It should work perfectly.

Troubleshooting the Windows 10 October Update

If after all that the Windows 10 October Update still doesn’t work, let us reset the entire process and begin again.

1. Open up a command line as an Administrator.
2. Type ‘net stop wuauserv’ and hit Enter.
3. Type ‘net stop bits’ and hit Enter.
4. Type ‘net stop cryptsvc’ and hit Enter.
5. Type ‘ren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution\SoftwareDistribution.old’ and hit Enter.
6. Type ‘ren %systemroot%\system32\catroot2 catroot2.old’ and hit Enter.
7. Type ‘net start wuauserv’ and hit Enter.
8. Type ‘net start bits’ and hit Enter.
9. Type ‘net start cryptsvc’ and hit Enter.

Now you can retry Windows Update. The above process disables all the Windows Update services and renames the two data files. We restart the services so we can run the update again. Now it should work perfectly.

If you have any issues with the Windows 10 October Update we can help. The computer repair guys at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey can help with any computer or networking issue you may have. Bring your computer to our store and we will see what we can do!