To have this stuff articulated and documented is a huge help to a large group of users. You guys should get together and write a book, or at least post this (and more) on a web page or something.
Jabiru
It can be helpful information yes. I accumulated this during spending time examining the CBS.log file. I try to find out how to interpreted some faults. As an IT-professional (an Oracle DBA) I always look a bit deeper in stuff in order to understand what is going on. It's not anyone cup of tea to look inside this file that in some cases can become more than 100Mb. Opening it with notepad is not the right way.
It means that notepad tries to read it inside it's buffer. Something of which to much to ask of such a simple program. You must use an editor that is capable to load a big part inside it's buffer and as soon if it sees that it must load more it does it accordingly. UltraEdit is such a program but Notepad++ is also fine. I use that program because it is programming aware (Shows different colors based on the scripting language. I use it for Perl (.pl), BAT files (.cmd and .bat) and programming Powershell stuff. (.ps1)) UltraEdit is also programming aware but it costs money to license it. Notepad++ is free as licensed under the GNU General Public License.
It is not a good idea to look inside the CBS.log as a whole. 98% of the stuff is CBS worker related and the messages can be quite cryptic. If you want to analyze a part of the CBS.log during an certain SFC or DISM command. The worker proces that can keep this file occupied is for the main part of the time down. It's owner; The Trusted Installer is tied to the Windows Modules Installer service. It only comes alive when issuing a SFC or DISM command. So normally I would go to the C:/Windows/Logs/CBS directory and rename the current file CBS.log into CBS_old.log for example. (If the service is started you can't do that because it's owner is holding the file) Starting then a SFC or DISM will result in; The Trusted Installer become active (and the Windows Modules Installer service will be started) When it's finished and the service has stopped again you know it's finished. You can always see live what it's written by that Powershell command that I mentioned earlier. Makes things more clearer and smaller. The CBS.log file can hold >1 updates and has multiple DISM actions one after the other. Where the one action ends and the other one starts is difficult to see it if the file is more than 100Mb in size. So make chucks for inspection. After a while you are getting the hang of it what the CBS proces is doing. I spent much time analyzing this file in case something (like an error) is occurring. And try to figure what it's going wrong. Sometimes It see an 0xXXXXXXXX error code as well inside the Update Windows window and inside the CBS.log. I will give a possible fix one try and if it does not work:
I just start an In-Place-Installment of the original 24H2 Win11 26100.1742 ISO. (it will take spending too much time to solve some issues -> Goto straight to the ultimate fix.) Do not reboot your system in this case. Just while Windows is running start setup.exe inside the ISO. The installation knows already by starting it it will begin an In-Place-Installment. It will leave all your data alone. I turn off even the download updates option because that is not necessary! It will reinstall the complete Windows Component Store and the files onto the Windows disk with a fresh version of it's first release; 26100.1742. Turn afterwards immediately the option inside the Settings - Windows Update - "Get the newest update as soon it is available" to off. First run SFC /scannow and DISM /RestoreHealth command to confirm that there are no errors to be found in this stadium. After those checks you can turn on that option again and press on "Search for Updates now". It will search and it will download the latest version of 26100.xxxx straight away and install it without any loss of data and update your Windows 11 system to the latest patch level.
Microsoft keeps promising that the update will go flawlessly by tinkering at the update process. (smaller, faster, lesser faults..blablabla) I? I don't share their opinion. I have seen enough that their promises are failing time and time again. I am afraid that nothing will change when they turn on 25H2 that lay dormant on each system now in preparation of the final release. As I should believe the rumors; It's nearly done. Maybe a final small update and then they will flip the switch in order to release 25H2. They better make sure by that time they release a 25H2 ISO on their website. In potential everyone system can not make it till the end. It's not sending a major update arround or releasing an ISO so that you can install 25H2 yourself. When they flip that switch I will put my fingers in my ears so I can't hear the load bang....
One big drawback of 24H2 is when you use the DISM /AnalyzeComponentStore command it will say by default: There are 2 reclaimable packages; So cleanup required? Yes! And as soon as you cleanup the store (/StartComponentCleanup) those 2 packages will show up during an other /AnalyzeComponentStore action again and again because those 2 belongs to build 1742 and it can not be reclaimed. It was an easy task to adjust the DISM reaction during the /AnalyzeComponentStore command to alter it's outcome in case if it sees those 2 packages and alter it's outcome from 2 to 0. Now people are deleting 1 of these packages all over the place because they want to see a result of 0. Once I found out what was the reason behind this behavior I asked Microsoft to change this. They could not be bothered by this. After a few In-place-installment I could not be bothered also. I see the number: 2. I know why this is happening so I don't delete that 1 package anymore. I just spring into action if it says any other figure higher than 2. The default should give always a reaction of 2 packages reclaimable. So deleting 1 package with a size of a few Kb's. Big deal. I hope they will have this fixed inside 25H2. (I am curious what then the base build would be. 26100.5000? We have to wait and see...)
I am helping people here and on the official Microsoft forum as well. I see what Microsoft is telling people what to do in case they ran into trouble. Is is usually a copy-past story. The same replies can be shown everywhere. So nothing new under the sun with their standard answers. I am aware of this. As soon as I see someone with some troubles I am direct and advise immediate to start an In-place-Installment. You can check as they advised 10 other things first. You can check it but would not solve the situation. Lesser fuss and solved within the hour. I am getting tiered of the same advise they will give people.
I am sharing also my knowledge to everybody on this forum if I can. Others are like me are sharing their knowledge also. If have a general good feeling why things are happening as they do. A deeper understanding of the inside and outs are required to do so. Everything is happening of an reason. The knowledge base is quite large on this forum. It's only the challenge to knowing what to write in order to search for the answer you are seeking. I have also questions and searching for answers always leads to an entry that will solve my issue or in most cases give me a clue what direction to take in order to solve my problem.
For instance; I was quite tired of how the icons are displayed at my PC. I wanted different icons. More recognisable. So I found out that all I have to do to place an visable icon reduced in size inside the root of each drive called autorun.ico. Accompanied with an text file autorun.inf that will be displayed the name of the drive inside explorer. (It is not the same as giving a drive a name. The autorun function is sitting higher on the explorer ladder) There is a topic called "Show Us Your Desktop" I showed how my explorer looks like when I open my PC. The icons is telling it all what kind of function they have. A bootable NVMe, a non bootable NVMe, a harddisk, a detachable USB drive, a USB stick. All visible and recognizable at one glance. Just by using two small files in the root of each drive.
Easy does it.
