Updating to Windows 10 Version 2004/Conexant Drivers

A similar experience with no happy ending - yet.

An update from Windows 10 Version 1909 Build 18363.1500 was offered in the notifications section, stating that  Version 1909 would soon be unsupported. The laptop in question is a Lenovo ThinkPad S1 Yoga (20CD), 2013 vintage i7/8GB/SSD, my workhorse that never failed. It has Conexant SmartAudio HD sound, driver version 8.66.16.50. Kept firmware updated with ThinkPad system update. Internet at my place of work is fast and reliable.

The first part of the update went pretty speedy until it became stuck at 61%, just as the author of the post reported. After 20h in this state with USO Core Worker Process consuming 3% CPU, it failed with the message "We could not install this update but you can try again (0xc1900104). "

I did try again and hours later it is stuck again at 61%. Because it is my trusted laptop, I did not try any experimental audio driver updates. At this point, it looks like it will fail again. All I can hope for is that telemetry will provide the Windows Update team with info so that they can fix the process.

If I was solving a technical problem, I would slog through the logs to see what the problem is. I do not have the time or inclination to do this for a Windows Update problem.

By the way, several older Lenovo laptops and a few Acer's of one of my clients that were blocked from updates because of Conexant audio did indeed update successfully over the past few days, which I found encouraging.

I too decided to be patient and wait for the Windows Update block to be removed and have 20H2 offered to my system without performing any gymnastics.

 

Well, last Friday (April 9) … 20H2 was offered to me (no driver updated was ever offered or installed by Windows Update or my computer manufacturer, Dell). However:

 

1. During the last stage of the update process while within the Windows Update window - *before* the first reboot (from Windows into the upgrade environment), the progress stalled out at 61%. After waiting for more than an hour …
2. I went into Event Viewer and saw an error message that the upgrade to 20H2 had failed. However, no such warning was presented within the WU interface, as a notification, or in any other way! Had I not scanned Event Viewer, I would not have known the process failed!
3. I rebooted (as per MS advice that some systems may fail, and rebooting can resolve), went back to WU and again, process stalled at 61%
4. Did some research, and the stall at 61% seems to have been a common issue with systems having Conexant drivers during the insider phase of the 20H2 release, and for some during the general release
5. Rebooted again, disabled the driver (but did NOT delete or change to a generic), rebooted, launched WU … still stuck at 61%
6. Rebooted again, deleted the driver and its files (from within device manager), did *not* reboot, and then ran WU update again
7. This time, 1909 successfully was upgraded to 20H2 (and pretty quickly too)
8. After logging into Windows post-update … the *same* Conexant driver was downloaded and installed by Windows (which is something others have also reported).

 

So the good news is – I am on 20H2 and all seems well.

 

The very bad news, which seems to have impacted you as well – MS *offered* the update via Windows Update, which one would assume means they lifted the block and resolved the issue. I would probably have been stuck at 61% indefinitely (in my quick research, some reported being stuck at 61% for days and never completing the upgrade), had I not known where to look/what to research.

 

Let me know if you want any more details. Hope this is helpful to someone!

@howardagoldberg

Thank-you very much for your very concise report, I only wish I could repeat this on my laptop.

Since my report of my own issues, I have rolled back to the Connexant Driver after the upgrade failed again, using the Hi Defination driver.

I am no longer being offered the 20H2 update, that option is no longer there. So its back to waiting on Microsoft deciding that either my pc will no longer be upgraded due to these recent upgrade failures or to await a further opportunity when they decide it is ok again to test my pc out once again.

Honestly. if I could afford to buy a new laptop it would be an Applemac, they don't appear to have the same issues as Microsoft.

Thanks again for your post, it was very informative!

I too decided to be patient and wait for the Windows Update block to be removed and have 20H2 offered to my system without performing any gymnastics.

Well, last Friday (April 9) … 20H2 was offered to me (no driver updated was ever offered or installed by Windows Update or my computer manufacturer, Dell). However:

1. During the last stage of the update process while within the Windows Update window - *before* the first reboot (from Windows into the upgrade environment), the progress stalled out at 61%. After waiting for more than an hour …
2. I went into Event Viewer and saw an error message that the upgrade to 20H2 had failed. However, no such warning was presented within the WU interface, as a notification, or in any other way! Had I not scanned Event Viewer, I would not have known the process failed!
3. I rebooted (as per MS advice that some systems may fail, and rebooting can resolve), went back to WU and again, process stalled at 61%
4. Did some research, and the stall at 61% seems to have been a common issue with systems having Conexant drivers during the insider phase of the 20H2 release, and for some during the general release
5. Rebooted again, disabled the driver (but did NOT delete or change to a generic), rebooted, launched WU … still stuck at 61%
6. Rebooted again, deleted the driver and its files (from within device manager), did *not* reboot, and then ran WU update again
7. This time, 1909 successfully was upgraded to 20H2 (and pretty quickly too)
8. After logging into Windows post-update … the *same* Conexant driver was downloaded and installed by Windows (which is something others have also reported).

So the good news is – I am on 20H2 and all seems well.

The very bad news, which seems to have impacted you as well – MS *offered* the update via Windows Update, which one would assume means they lifted the block and resolved the issue. I would probably have been stuck at 61% indefinitely (in my quick research, some reported being stuck at 61% for days and never completing the upgrade), had I not known where to look/what to research.

Let me know if you want any more details. Hope this is helpful to someone!

I'm also stuck at 1909 at the moment. I received an update of the Conexant driver on March 13th which bumped the version to 8.66.95.70 but no update yet.

According to device manager the new UCI64A231.dll is out of the range that Microsoft has blocked, but I noticed that some old dll files (UCI64A134.dll and UCI64A195.dll) are still present in the system32 directory. Is it possible that these old dll files block the update to a new version? If so, would the solution be as simple as to just move these old files to a temperary location?

There is no WUID / KBID for Driver Updates... It just shows Conextant SmartAudioHD Driver - 8.xxxxxx ( I don't remember the exact number) - Driver Update