2019-08-01

While attempting to perform an in-place upgrade from Windows 7 Enterprise to Windows 10 Enterprise I came across Error Code 0x80004005.

Looking at C:\WINDOWS\CCM\Logs\smsts.log gave me the clues on the error message.



There are many posts on how to fix this particular error message; it seems that this error code is pretty generic and it shows up on several instances in many SCCM operations – this document particularly deals with a task sequence for an in-place operating system upgrade.

Since this was an in-place Windows upgrade, I needed to find out more detailed information and I was able to get it from C:\$WINDOWS-BT\Sources\Panther this folder contains a list of .XML files that collect compatibility data that is collected during the upgrade process.



I opened the last XML file and this gave me the actual clue as to what was failing during the upgrade process – video drivers were the culprit!



Now I know what’s going on during the task sequence and I can attempt to fix this issue.

I’ll blog about how to fix this issue in a new post, stay tuned!

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