Upgrade E6540 to Windows 10

Question

Hello,

I am trying to upgrade some of our E6540 laptops to Windows 10. I have a few that have been successful, while many others fail. The ones that fail have both Intel HD 4600& AMD Radeon HD8790m video and Intel 6235 WiFi and Bluetooth adapters, while the successful ones have Intel Centrino Untimate N 6300 wifi and Intel HD 4600. I am not seeing any other differences. I have updated the BIOS and chipset drivers, disabled and uninstalled the wifi, bluetooth, and AMD drivers and Win 10 still fails to install. It gets to checking updates ~30%, the restarts and says "Undoing changes made to your computer" and reboots to Win 7. Looking at Sources/Panther compat files I can see some inf files oem0, oem1, oem42, oem24.inf are set to "true" in blocking migration. Those files are the AMD driver, Intel driver, XPS document. I am not sure what to do next since some of my 6540 do work with a Win 10 upgrade.

eric_sg61 · Accepted Answer

I was able to resolve this by not installing updates during installation. I clicked on 'Change how Windows Setup downloads updates' on the Install Windows 10 screen and chose Not Now. Installation succeeded and then I triggered an update and drivers were installed.

Mary G · Answer

Dell has customized win 10 drivers for your model. After installing windows 10, get all the win 10 drivers you need from Dell and no one else--no amd, intel etc. You cannot use other manufacturers' drivers. Dell has customized drivers for your exact model. Reinstall the original win 7 drivers. Don't update drivers or uninstall anything until windows 10 installs. The only thing to update beforehand is the bios. You should have the latest bios for a OS update.

eric_sg61 · Answer

Thank you for the reply.  I have already tried upgrading with  clean systems without removing/updating drivers.  Like I stated, Some of my 6540's complete the upgrade to Win10 and some don't. The only difference is the hardware. They all fail at the same spot: the initial install, then initial reboot, then 'working on updates' gets to about 25-30% and install reboots to reverting back to windows 7. It has to be a hardware issue since that is the only difference between success and failure. I have tried many different ways(SFC, DISM. clear updates distribution folder etc.) to upgrade and they fail on that specific hardware configuration.  The ones that do upgrade work great.

nyc10036 · Answer

The only thing you haven't tried is a clean install.   .

eric_sg61 · Answer

A clean install is a last resort, these laptops are in use and I need to preserve programs and files. Also, not sure if they would activate with a clean install.

nyc10036 · Answer

Make a hard drive image backup. Clean install skipping the part asking for product key. Go online and activate Windows 10 using product key. This step worked for me last week.   .

SerCoG · Answer

Hello, after solving and installing. What is the Windows 10 version that your E6540 are running?

eric_sg61 · Answer

I have some 6540's up to 20H2

Latitude

Upgrade E6540 to Windows 10

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