Upgrading ASUS CM6870 to Windows 10 Creators Edition or April 2018 release 1703, 1709, 1804 (RT3090 PCIe wireless card)

Anonymous
2017-04-29T19:14:40+00:00

This was a pain for me, so I hope this helps someone.

I made 15 attempts to update my ASUS CM6870 from the Windows 10 Anniversary Edition to the Creators Edition (Creators Update), I *always* hung hard around 40 or 42% after the first system reboot, with the 'rolling' animation ground to a halt. This almost always points to a hardware problem.

I did everything to find the bad hardware! I disconnected all of the USB, ripped out all of the superfluous drivers, did a clean reboot, did a driver uninstall on my NVIDIA drivers using DDU, and uninstalled every program that had a funky driver like the VMWare standalone converter and my Cisco Anyconnect VPN. Nothing worked.

Each reboot reported "0xc1900101 - 0x30018 the installation failed in the FIRST_BOOT phase with an error during SYSPREP operation"

Digging into the clues from files left behind in C:$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther, I saw that the last thing before failure was a bunch of SPPNP messages which seems to be the SYSPREP driver loading phase. There were also a bunch of <NUL> characters at the end of the file. Some piece of hardware was refusing to play nice. I had painstakingly removed everything I could without opening the case.

Finally, based on various hints on forums, I cracked open the PC and pulled out my PCIe wireless card. Boom. Fully installed.

The Wireless card was a PCIe x1 in a PCI x16 slot if that matters, and it was the ASUS branded MediaTek Railink technologies RT3090 wireless card.

(PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_3090&SUBSYS_760111AD&REV_00)

Once the Creators Update was installed, I was able to reinstall the card without incident. Go figure.

Edit: This problem probably applies to any system using a P8H61 or P8H77 motherboard. According to this thread, the P8H77-M PRO (CM6870) is affected, as are other ASUS desktops like the ASUS CM6730 with a P8H61‑M PRO with that RT3090 wireless card.

Other commenters report that the ROG CG6480 / TYTAN CG8480 and CM1855 are also affected, presumably also with the errant RT3090 card.

I also observed the problem with an Ascend Ascendtech WN7601R-H1 PCI card in HP desktops. This is also an RT3090 PCIe card.

Commenter Chris Deer reports that he also had the problem with the Acer L4610, L4620, and L480, possible other Acer "L" models.

The Fall Creators Edition and April 2018 update also have this problem, so the installer is not yet fixed to place nice with the RT3090 wireless card.

One commenter noted that moving the card from a PCIx16 slot to a PCIx4 slot also fixed the problem, so it may be an interaction between the card and the northbridge (motherboard chipset) in certain slots.

EDIT: WARNING: Be careful removing and re-inserting the wireless card; make sure the power cord is removed from the power supply. The sound card chip is right at that slot and I damaged it, so now my system no longer recognizes when speakers are attached. Looks like I scratched a trace on the motherboard.  I know it is a hardware problem because booting a Linux Live USB showed the same problem.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-01-05T18:18:41+00:00

    Thanks! Can you verify that the wireless card was an RT3090, or are other wireless cards affected?

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-04T15:19:24+00:00

    A thousand times thank you! My Father's ASUS machine was refusing to install Windows updates. He was perpetually hitting the postpone updates options on his machine and missing out on "crucial" security fixes. Your solution fixed it all in a span of 5 minutes.

    My Dad did countless hours of troubleshooting, and even called Microsoft. At first, they declared his computer wasn't supported anymore, as ASUS doesn't even have Win10 BIOS drivers listed on their site. He asked if his computer wasn't supported, then why did it computer pass the Win10 compatibility test? They didn't have an answer. Then, after manually tearing his Windows installation down to minimal services, they declared his machine was fixed and would no longer have any problems. They were wrong. It still stalled on Windows Updates.

    That's when I got involved more than I was previously. Microsoft ruined all of my careful software installs, from remote management to my parents' end-user backup solution. I understand disabling services as a standard troubleshooting step, but they should at least put things back, or at least document what they did, but that's another story.

    This thread, however, saved the day. His rig is hardwired so there was zero harm in yanking the wireless card. Guess what? It worked! He's now completely up to date with Windows updates again and is a little less trepidatious about installing them. Who would've thought that even disabling the wireless card wouldn't be enough to get around the update bug?

    Now if only I could fix all the services that Microsoft manually disabled just as easily! I was hoping to avoid a Windows Reset, but I'm beginning to think I have to anyway.

    Thanks so much! This discovery was a lifesaver.

    -Greg

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-12-13T20:24:22+00:00

    Rather than continuing to face this issue with each subsequent update, I got rid of the problem permanently by replacing the wireless card with one designed to work with Windows 10.. 

    David

    On my side, I tried to use my RT3090 wireless card after the Creators upgrade and although Wifi was working pretty well, new issues also came up :

    • cannot perform a clean shutdown of Windows anymore (rolling animation frozen, had to shutdown using the power button)
    • cannot upgrade the PCI Bus driver using Windows Device Manager (complete PC freeze during the driver upgrade process)

    So you're right, it's better to replace the wireless card, or at least remove it to avoid unexpected freezes.

    Julien

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-12-10T14:04:13+00:00

    Hi remaker,

    Thank you very much for posting ! I've been struggling for months with Creators upgrade and after removing the wireless card, the upgrade finally succeed.

    For the record, my PC is an ASUS CM6431 (P8H61 motherboard) with an ASUS branded RT3090PCIE-C1 wireless card and I had similar symptoms when trying to apply Creator's upgrade :

    • stuck (black screen) with moderate CPU usage (medium level of noise for CPU fan)
    • after a manual reboot, upgrade resumes until percentage goes up to around 82%, then stuck again (no black screen, but rolling animation is frozen), again with moderate CPU usage
    • after another manual reboot, rolling back to previous version of Windows

    Again, thank you very much, this issue was driving me crazy.

    Julien

    Rather than continuing to face this issue with each subsequent update, I got rid of the problem permanently by replacing the wireless card with one designed to work with Windows 10.. 

    David

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-10-12T01:40:16+00:00

    You are a genius....worked as advertised, just need to walk back from the frayed ends of sanity; this was giving me so much fever even went and bought a new hard drive and Windows 10 Home edition thinking my registry was jacked according to other threads on this topic.

    Thanks much

    Mike

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