Windows 10 In-Place Upgrade Assessment Error Handling

As I progress to making Windows 10 available to end users I needed to polish out the error handling. While I am using the Upgrade Readiness tool that Microsoft provides to target successful systems, I am still performing one final check in the Task Sequence by having the Task Sequence do an assessment before continuing and capturing those results.

You just insert the Upgrade Operating System step and select the box 'Perform Windows Setup compatibility scan without starting upgrade' at minimum. I have also selected the other chekboxes below it such as 'Ignore any dismissible compatibility messages' checkbox. If unchecked, this will for example, trigger a failure for an incompatible driver that gets removed anyway. Useful if you have some weird driver for a microscope type device (I do!) but not useful if you accept the removal that the upgrade does. For those types of endpoints the Readiness tool has identified them.

I also enabled the last two check boxes. These will cause the eval step to pull the latest eval info from Microsoft instead of using what data shipped on the ISO. There may be some proxy concerns here.

Here is what that part of the Task Sequence looks like:

For initial roll out to IT, I am using Niall C. Brady's dialog Powershell Script so I wont cover that part here. I am working on a template script to pull HTML edited file to be more polished for an end user when I get to that point but Niall's script works great.

The 'Upgrade Assessment' step outputs to the read-only variable _SMSTSOSUpgradeActionReturnCode. SETUP.EXE actually outputs in hex whereas the variable is in decimal. Looking at Microsofts blog post these are the major exit codes. I converted the hex to decimal with a converter so I work in the same format ConfigMgr is.

• No issues found:  0xC1900210 (3247440400)
• Compatibility issues found (hard block):  0xC1900208 (3247440392)
• Migration choice (auto upgrade) not available (probably the wrong SKU or architecture)· 0xC1900204 (3247440388)
• Does not meet system requirements for Windows 10: 0xC1900200  (3247440384)
• Insufficient free disk space: 0xC190020E (3247440398)

The 'Assessment Errors Detected' group has a condition of _SMSTSOSUpgradeActionReturnCode ≠ 3247440400 whereas the 'Upgrade the Operating System' group has _SMSTSOSUpgradeActionReturnCode = 3247440400.

Under the 'Assessment Errors Detected' Group, each of the 4 sub groups matches a code in _SMSTSOSUpgradeActionReturnCode. For example, the 'Compatibility Issues found (hard block)' group has a condition for _SMSTSOSUpgradeActionReturnCode = 3247440392.

Then each error code displays a custom message and errors the Task Sequence out. For the  'Compatibility Issues found (hard block)' error it shows

The Upgrade Assessment detected an error which is preventing a successful upgrade and it must be mitigated first. There is an application or driver that must be removed first. This is generally due to an old version of Sophos Safeguard present. Please contact the IT Service Desk for assistance.

Again, these groups are just a final sanity check, While the Readiness tool identifies bullet 2 impacted systems, ConfigMgr collections are identifying the last two bullets for example.

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This TaskSequence is provided as-is, no warranty is provided or implied.The author is NOT responsible for any damages or data loss that may occur through the use of this TaskSequence.  Always test, test, test before rolling anything into a production environment.

Per request I have made a sample Task Sequence available here so you can see it in action.

-Kevin