Solved Heads up -you might run into this with windows update crashing older systems

Something that may or may not eventually affect Windows 11 22h2 on very old hardware but I though I'd throw it out here.

In early June one of my little old ladies who was using a 13 year old HP system running Windows 10 had a blue screen when the May cumulative applied. I finally was able to walk her through getting into recovery where she did a system restore. We temporarily paused her updates for 35 days by which time the July cumulative had hit. It happened again. The only error message given is KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED with no hex stop code.

I worked on this thing for days. No amount of work on my part would get any cumulative update since April to apply without blue screen but all the .net cumulatives were no problem. Clean install as both uefi and mbr(multiple times)run great until updates apply either automatically or manually. Tried driver verifier, new ram, another hdd, I even thought her old, old integrated graphics that has no driver update since 2015 might be the culprit so I installed a discrete card instead. Poking around in her bios (which is by far the most basic bios I have ever encountered and has had no update in 10 years) she did not have a "secure boot option" but did have "data execution prevention." I turned that off and clean installed Windows again. Still no go.

After 4 clean installs and 4 restore from backup, I have no other ideas. I installed Mint Cinnamon on it and it ran fine but she wouldn't have it. She's determined to keep this dinosaur running Windows 10. I told her I could try to use all the tricks I know to keep WU from running but she wouldn't have that either as she's paranoid about security. Finally, I said "Lady, you don't owe me a dime. If you want to run windows on this old computer and continue to get updates, you'll have to find someone smarter than me. Take the money and buy yourself another computer." Guess what, she doesn't want to do that either.

The reason I'm pointing this out is all this began with the first revocation update in May and has ended (at least for me) with the second stage revocation update in July. There has to be some connection. If anyone has suggestions, I'll gladly accept them. @hsehestedt I'm flagging you since you seem to know more about this than anyone.

Wow, that's an interesting situation. I'm tossing this around in my head and can't seem to come up with anything.

However, the one question in my mind is this: As a 13 year old system, does that system even use a UEFI BIOS? If not, then the security updates don't apply.

I'll ponder this some more and post back if I can think of anything.

Yes it does have uefi which has been around since 2007. The hard drive is the original and it's dated 2010 and there is some sort of quality inspection sticker inside also dated 2010. It came with Windows 7. When I checked I found the HP P6 was sold between 2011 and 2013. It would blue screen immediately during or just after the updates went thru the applying update step after a restart..It's a mess, but I'm done. I told her to take it to someone else. That's a first for me as I've always been one to never let anything beat me.I spent 16 hours work on a computer worth $39.99.

@glasskuter you got me curious. I've got a old Asus F50Sv laptop the hasn't been updated in a while. Gonna see if it blue screens after the May update.

BTW, like the new color of your Pay it Forward message, much easier to read than the red.

@Scott, it probably will update fine. Lord knows, there's a ton of old Windows 7 machines running 10. There's something specific about this particular PC. I just never could figure out what that something is. I really thought it was a driver, but on one of the clean installs I manually tried the cumulative before any third party drivers were installed

glasskuter said:

HP P6

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glasskuter said:

Lord knows, there's a ton of old Windows 7 machines running 10

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So do I. I have a couple of them in the "wild" as well and so far no issues.
What exact P6 is it and I will keep an eye out.
I am lucky my client base is willing to get a replacement when "I" deem it can't be fixed or not worth it to do so. With Oct 2025 growing neer all failing or failed computers are being replaced and the rest in 2025 as I will not support unsupported machines.
All my clients have been advised and are preparing.

glasskuter said:

@Scott, it probably will update fine. Lord knows, there's a ton of old Windows 7 machines running 10. There's something specific about this particular PC. I just never could figure out what that something is. I really thought it was a driver, but on one of the clean installs I manually tried the cumulative before any third party drivers were installed

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You were right, it updated fine.

I guess you have tried safe mode and similar starts?

Did you try to create a vhdx file and install via dism /Apply-Image.

Windows 10 will install that way even on ancient hardware no need for secure boot or a tpm but you will need a UEFI partition. W10 will install from a W10 ISO on to an MBR system if you don't have EFI but I think all HP machines from that era could boot both MBR and EFI.

I've generally found installing via dism /Apply-Image and bcdboot to install the bootloader generally works even when other classical type of installs fail.

Cheers
jimbo

I've been running this over and over in my head trying to think what else could possibly done.

There are only two other things that I can think of:

1) I know that you said that the owner of the system only wants to run Windows 10 on that system, but since you were doing clean installs on it already, I would be curious to know what would happen if you installed Win 11 rather than 10 on it. I suspect that it would very likely have the exact same problem, but wouldn't it be hysterical if Windows 11 ran without the problem seen with Windows 10? Again, I know she probably would not want Win 11, but I'm simply curious and would laugh like a hyena if Win 11 actually ran on a system where Win 10 was now having problems.

2) You might try posting on HP's forums to see if anyone else has seen this with the same model computer. Unfortunately, there's probably a number of things working against you such as these:

How many people out there actually still have and use this model PC since it is 13 years old?
Of those few, how many will happen to post about it or search on the HP forums if they run into this issue?

It's a long shot, but I'm trying to come up with anything at all

glasskuter said:

The only error message given is KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED with no hex stop code.

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KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED is bugcheck 1E.

If there are still problems then consider opening a thread in TF.

It would be interesting to see if any other similar spec system has the same issue. Since she is paranoid about security, maybe you could persuade to upgrade to Windows 11 to be "safer". In my test laptop (1st system specs) from 2009 I have installed 22H2, have upgraded to build 22621.1928 and haven't seen any issues. To exclude driver issues, download the Windows Update Show/Hide Tool and block all driver updates found. Then manually install the drivers preferable official ones from Intel or other manufacturers. There are also hacked Intel 945G and Mobile Family 4 (aka GMA 4500) graphics drivers that install in Windows 10/11 and have better performance than the Microsoft WDDM 1.0 driver installed from Windows Update. They also provide the Intel Graphics Properties which is not installed with Microsoft driver.

Meaning no disrespect, but "NO I WON'T!"
Because after the initial install and driver update, I permanently SHUT OFF Windows Updates!

Safe and never sorry!

kelper said:

I guess you have tried safe mode and similar starts?

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Yes. several times, also have reset bios to default.

Someone asked what model it is. It's a p6-2143w.
I'm guilty of eating my words (that's a recurring affliction of mine) about being done with this piece of crap since the "why" of it was driving me crazy. Last night I clean installed 10 again. With no third party drivers installed, I made an image and then manually installed the April cumulative with no problem. I then applied the May cumulative. During the updates' restart, boom, blue screen. Forced shutdown. Restored the image. Manually applied June cumulative. Blue screen. Same process with July cumulative.

I then installed Windows 11 as was suggested with no third party drivers. Made an image. Manually applied April cumulative. All good. Manually applied May cumulative. Blue screen.

IMO there's definitely something included in the cumulatives beginning in May for both 10 and 11 that doesn't like this machine's old hardware.

I'm truly giving up this time. I've paused updates, disabled all services which WU uses,made the registry changes, and will set her to a metered network. Hopefully I've done enough to stop the updates. She can use it as is or keep it as a desk decoration along with the old XP computer she doesn't use but refuses to get rid of. Thanks guys for your suggestions. I knew if y'all didn't have an answer I wouldn't find one elsewhere.

You are more knowledgable than me, but for the benefit of all who follow, did you eliminate faulty RAM? Can you boot off a Windows install USB Drive?
Something I did yesterday nixxed by network adapter but it worked fine when I booted into Macrium Reflect, so I knew it was not a hardware fault.
I was testing Bleachbit and must have deleted too much. So I will stick to Disk Clean-up and, occasionally, Crap Cleaner.

glasskuter,

This seems to be similar to Windows 10 cases in which old computers could not update past, for example, Version 1709.
Whilst those computers could run Windows 10, they were not compliant with Windows 10 specs.
MS staff design updates on the assumption that computers are fully compliant.
So, in your case, MS assumed that the KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED signal could be handled, which seems fair enough.

An old computer of mine was one of those caught out by this problem in Windows 10.
Other forum members, with the same Dell Inspiron 9300 model [2005, originally WinXP], sought help in TenForums.
Despite exhaustive efforts by some highly competent TenForums members, no solution was ever found.
Those computers were limited to Windows 10 Version 1709.
There were other examples including Version 1809 if I recall correctly.


All the best,
Denis

What happens if you clean install using a fully up-to-date Windows 10 ISO from UUP Dump (which includes all the updates to July) ?

@BrianInEngland is onto something here. What if the fault lies in the actual application or installation of the updates since you noted that "During the updates' restart, boom, blue screen"?

Maybe having a build that has the updates already packaged into it would help.

Now, I'm going to reveal something a little embarrassing: I have NEVER EVER even once used UUP Dump simply because I add updates to Windows images myself with my own program so I have had no need to use another program. Does anyone know how UUP Dump actually integrates the updates? Does it update only the main image (the install.wim) or does it properly update EVERYTHING?

By everything I mean:

Update the install.wim
Update the boot.wim
Update the winre.wim that is embedded within the install.wim
Update all setup files located outside of any of the WIM files

@glasskuter, I know that you said that you are really done this time, but if you ever revisit this you might want to try that suggesting of using a build that has the updates integrated into it. You might want to make one boot media created with UUP Dump and I can make another available to you on OneDrive that I made personally. It's nothing against UUP Dump - it's simply an unknown quantity to me and I have every confidence that my own images are done the "right" way, having included all the updates noted above.

I would try another approach. Since these updates don't like her hardware, I would take the disk off and connect to another computer. Then install all updates and then put the disk back in her computer. Alternatively you could connect the disk to your system as second or via a USB to SATA adapter, then create a virtual machine and configure it use her physical disk and boot into Windows (virtualize her system). Install all updates and then put the disk back. I was thinking to do a similar trick so I can upgrade my HP Stream 7 tablet that has less than 10GB free. I could clone the internal storage (32GB eMMC) in a larger USB flash drive (64GB), virtualize it, upgrade Windows abd then clone back to the tablet, but haven't found the time yet.

Try3 said:

Those computers were limited to Windows 10 Version 1709.

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Too late to try anything else.
Hey Denis. I thought of that too but discounted the idea since the PC had already updated to 22H2, but guess it could come down to the version. Guess I'll never know the "why".
Here's a chuckle of the day for you. I delivered the PC and while I was hooking it up she said "I've got a cousin in Arkansas who knows a lady that works for some company that uses foreigners over in India to design software for them (???) They've got to be real smart. I won't use it much until I ask my cousin to ask her friend to ask those people if they can get my updates to working." I bit my tongue. I'm still shaking my head.