After three weeks… I’m back in the fast ring!!

Truth be told, I never really left and my other work machines, including the “Frank-in-800”, a seriously modified HP Z820 that was put together by stripping down and combining two HP Z800 and two HP Z820 workstations.  The “Frank-in-800” hosts my multiple lab environments.  Yes, even my lab runs on Windows Insider Fast Ring.

The trouble all started just before Christmas.  A stack of new gear had just arrived as part of a small initiative – a tech refresh where a small group of people would be able to chose from a list of modern devices running Windows 10.

As we had a few spares, I thought I’d give the Dell XPS 13 a go.

Naturally, as soon as I got it the first thing was to move it to Windows Insider Fast Ring.  Build 17063 had just come out after a few weeks without a build, and this one was special.  The Windows Insider team had gifted us Windows Insiders with a super cool new feature – Timeline and I was very much looking forward to it.

To cut a long story short, several attempts were made to upgrade from v1709 to build 17063.  All failed.  I even downloaded the Build 17025 ISO, which was successful leading to a moment of hope that I was on my way to Build 17063.  Sadly, that hope was quickly replaced with despair.

Several failed attempts later, it was time to take a break.  I was on vacation after all.

Three day ago, Build 17074 was released.  That glimmer of hope returned…  But that hope was replaced with despair, again…

I had logged both feedback with Microsoft and contacted my Account Manger at Dell.  Dell had confirmed that others had a similar problem and the issue was with the DisplayLink driver.  I removed the driver, but alas, nothing changed.

Fortunately Twitter came to the rescue, specifically, Jen Gentleman of the Windows Insider team.  Jen pointed out the known issue in the Build 17074 blog

• Certain devices may hang on the boot screen after upgrading. If this happens to you, go into the BIOS and disable virtualization

A quick suspension of BitLocker and disabling of Virtualisation, I crossed my fingers and kicked off the update process.

The excitement started to build as the machine successfully restarted, and continued past the point where it normally would hang.

Then it happened…  100% and a log on screen

SUCCESS!!

Jen, if you ever read this, you’re a superstar and Microsoft are fortunate to have you as their ambassador.  I thank you.

Now it’s time to get stuck into Build 17074

P.