Aaahh: failure configuring updates, reverting changes

Providing IT support to many businesses in Croydon means we do our fair share of head-scratching. The latest problem we've had to troubleshoot is an issue running the Windows 10 Fall Creators update (1709). We have found that on some Windows machines, the update fails and will roll back the updates often showing you the ‘failure configuring updates, reverting changes’ error message.

Root cause of the issue

The issue occurs on machines joined to a domain that were upgraded to Windows 10 using the in-place upgrade method rather than a fresh install.

Steps to resolve:

  1. Disconnect the PC from the domain. Ensure you know the local administrator account password before disconnecting.
  2. Log in as the local administrator account and run the update.
  3. Re-join the updated PC to the domain.
  4. Log in as a domain user (unfortunately a new profile is created).
  5. Edit the ‘ProfileImagePath’ entry in REGEDIT so the path to the user folder points to the old, correct profile. See instruction on how to do so below:
  1. Open the registry editor.
  2. Navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
  3. Search for “ProfileImagePath” until you find the one that points to C:\Users\Username and change it to the old one.

We are yet to experience any issues with running the 1709 update this way but will update the blog accordingly if we do.

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