[SOLVED] Win 11 (old Upgrade vom 10 to 11) Installation Error 0x800703f1 Inplace Upgrade/Update not working also

[Marcstar]

Hello everyone,


I've been struggling with a persistent Windows Update issue for a while now, and I’m hoping someone here can help before I have to resort to a full clean installation.

A few weeks ago, I attempted to install the latest Windows updates, but the installation failed due to insufficient space on my old 256GB NVMe drive. I managed to free up about 30GB, but the updates still wouldn’t install.

I also tried performing an in-place upgrade/repair using the Media Creation Tool, but it failed with a message stating that Windows couldn’t repair the system.

To rule out any hardware issues and increase storage, I upgraded to a new 1TB NVMe SSD. I cloned my old drive to the new one and had to manually recreate the boot sectors to get it to boot properly.

Unfortunately, the issue still persists. Windows Update shows that updates install successfully, and I get prompted to restart my PC. However, after rebooting, Windows briefly shows 0% on the update screen, then goes black, and after about 30 seconds it reboots again—only to inform me that something went wrong and the update couldn’t be completed, and the changes are being reverted.

I’ve also tried installing the exact same update manually, as well as others, and the result is always the same.

The in-place repair attempts were done using ISOs of the exact same build as my current installation, as well as both older and newer builds. I was careful to match everything correctly. my setup is based on the en-GB version of Windows with a de-DE language interface.

The error code I consistently get is 0x800703f1.

I’ve spent the past three days trying to resolve this, and just found this forum today. I really hope someone here can point me in the right direction. I'd love to avoid a full reinstall if possible.


Thanks in advance for any advice or tips!

 

[Windows Update Bot]

Hi @Marcstar,

Welcome to Sysnative Forums!

If you haven't already, please review the posting instructions here, and attach the requested log files. Without log files, our helpers will not be able to assist, and this will slow down fixing your machine.

If logs have been already been provided, our team of volunteers will analyse the provided log files to build a fix for your system. Please be aware that this may take several days from your initial post, due to the high volume of threads that we receive.


- Sysnative Windows Update Team

 

[Marcstar]

Hey everyone,


I somehow managed to solve the problem on my own.
Unfortunately, the forum layout is a bit confusing, so I only came across this tutorial rather late:
How to repair corrupt or dirty registry hive files (Sysnative)


However, it did fix my issue – the "Drivers Hive" was indeed corrupted.


Could someone here (or maybe in the tutorial itself) briefly explain what these “sequence numbers” are all about, and why a file this corrupted can cause such major errors?


I’d really like to learn more about it.


Oh, and could a mod please delete the attached files?


Thanks a lot! :)

 

[Maxstar]

Hi and welcome to Sysnative,

Glad to hear you have managed to resolve this issue and more detailed information aboout the primary and secondary sequence numbers can be found on this GitHub page. As you can read in the thread with instructions, the main cause of such issues are power outages / forced reboots, bad ram and/or hard drives.

I have also removed the attached files as requested.