14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft rolled out Windows 10 build 15042 earlier today for Fast ring insiders, but it looks like some users cannot install it, and the process fails to complete.
The software giant has already acknowledged the issue and explained that, in most of the cases, PCs affected by this bug become unresponsive at the Windows boot logo screen because “one of the required install processes may initialize but not complete or timeout.”
The workaround involves just a few steps, and it’s obviously worth knowing from the very beginning that you should create a restore point before anything else (Windows 10 preview builds are not supposed to be installed on your main system anyway, so you should be safe).
The workaround
What you need to do is delete some registry keys in order to allow the installation process to complete. To do this, simply launch the Command Prompt with administrator privileges after letting the PC roll back to the previous OS build and booting back to desktop.
So click the Start button, type Command Prompt, right-click the result and Run as Administrator. Paste the following commands one by one (press enter after each line):
reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\setup\upgrade\nsimigrationroot /f
netsh int ipv6 set locality state=disabled
reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nsi\{eb004a01-9b1a-11d4-9123-0050047759bc}\28 /f
Reboot your computer, go back to Windows Update and search for the new build. This time, the install should complete successfully, though the process could still take a while depending on your configuration and connection speed.
Since we’ve seen users blaming Microsoft for shipping this build with such a bug, this is a problem that it’s kind of normal in the Windows Insider program, and this is actually the purpose of the whole thing in the first place: to diagnose bugs and address them before updates are released to all users.
The Creators Update is scheduled to go live in April, and Microsoft reportedly wants to get everything ready by the end of March when insiders should receive the final RTM build.