XPS 8500, What's the Windows 10 1809 holdup?

I would not worry as the machine is old, and v1803 is solid.

Yes, I've had (older) machines excluded or just slow offerings.

Sometimes, I think it's due to old hardware (like maybe that old AMD card).

https://www.dell.com/community/Vostro-Desktops/Vostro-460-XPS-8300-Upgrade-Adventures/m-p/6071783/highlight/true#M1312

IIRC, AMD obsoleted a bunch of (perfectly fine) cards for Windows-10. With (older) AMD, I'm always happy if Windows-10 tosses me any work driver-set.

1809 does not fit onto a single layer 4.7 gig dvd.

The ISSUE preventing update is the INTEL GRAPHICS driver.windows self destruct feature update black screen of death

1803 fits onto a standard DVD-R

I use 1803 dvd clean install then copy the 4.9 gig 1809 iso into the documents folder.

I then use 7 zip to extract the iso contents into the documents folder.

Then run the setup.exe as administrator offline to FORCE an update to 1809 and it works fine.

I then run cleanmgr.exe AND clean up system files and remove previous windows installations  which can be 28 gigs of windows.old folder.

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@speedstep wrote:

 

The ISSUE preventing update is the INTEL GRAPHICS driver.

 

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Yeah, I've seen similar on older machines.

IIRC, I just ignored it and forced latest (v1709 or v1803) on there with a clean-install. 

If you're that eager to update this XPS to build 1809, go to this link and click the Update Now button. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 ;

0xc00000f  is very specific and indicates a hardware error.  Recommend backup everything and clean install starting with 1803.  "A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed" Error Code: 0xC000000f  

Needs repair Recovery partition is TOO SMALL

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@jdrch wrote:
"Do you have the latest Intel video and audio drivers as was mentioned above?"
- Not sure those are relevant since I use an AMD graphics card (Intel GPU doesn't even show up in Windows) and my audio card is a Realtek on-board one. FWIW I ran Intel's driver utility and found no updates available.

"logged into an account with Administrator privileges?"
- Yes.

"antimalware app do you use?"
- Avira, but so do both the Inspiron and Flex 5 that were successfully updated.

"How much free disk space do you have?"
- >= 68% on a 1 TB mSATA.

Actually I'm wondering if that might be the issue as the mSATA drive is SATA1 while my data drive is SATA0 (per Dell mobo assignment, not my doing.) Maybe v1809 hasn't been tested or tested well on that config yet.

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Yes, your error message appears to be a software issue with the update app and lots of potential "fixes" offered on the net. That's why I suggested some things to check. Is "regular" Windows Update working correctly on this PC? You might run the WU troubleshooter to see if it finds/fixes any problems.

And yes, those Intel driver updates are necessary even if you don't use Intel Graphics or Audio. I got updates for them via Windows Update a month or so ago, so maybe you got them too.  And using the Intel wizard right before I forced the update, didn't offer newer drivers to me either.

Even if those other PCs run Avira too, you might try disabling it on this XPS. One never knows what might cause problems like this on one PC and not on another.

You didn't mention it, so I assume you aren't running iCloud on this PC, correct?

If you think it might be a problem with where the boot drive is connected, you could try moving the boot drive to SATA0 on the motherboard.

Doing a clean install is a royal pain because you'll have to reinstall all your apps and customized settings, etc. So I see that as a "when all else fails" solution...

You might want to disconnect all internal and external drives, except the boot drive and the 32-GB SSD cache drive, if you have it, and see if 1809 will install now...

Just a thought...