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Windows 10 Upgrade reboot loop or error 0xC1900101- 0x20017

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Recently I spent time troubleshooting a device unable to upgrade from the November Update (1511) of Windows 10 to the latest Anniversary Update (1607).

Setup would progress until the near end, after which it would reboot and remain stuck in a reboot loop. It's difficult to troubleshoot these situations, first thing to do is:

  1. Boot from alternate media, I used an USB stick with Windows 10 Anniversary Update media on it
  2. Hit "Install Now" and then choose "Repair your computer" on the bottom left corner
  3. Choose "Troubleshoot" and "Go build to the previous build"

Windows will roll-back and within minutes you should be able to logon the older operating system.
Next grab the setupact.log and setuperr.log located underneath the C:\Windows\Panther directory.

The thing that moved us into the right direction were the following log entries:

2016-10-24 11:08:47, Info                  [msoobe.exe] Added IOOBEGlobalSettingsCacheListener RecommendedSettings Plugin
2016-10-24 11:08:47, Info                  [msoobe.exe] Loading OOBE plugin Region Plugin
2016-10-24 11:08:47, Error                [msoobe.exe] Failed to Initialize plugin [Region Plugin] [hr=0x80070057]
2016-10-24 11:08:47, Error                [msoobe.exe] Failed create OOBE plugin from key Region Plugin [hr=0x80070057]
2016-10-24 11:08:47, Error                [msoobe.exe] Failed to load OOBE plugins with hr=0x80070057
2016-10-24 11:08:47, Info                  [msoobe.exe] Wrote End-of-OOBE Timestamp to Registry
2016-10-24 11:08:47, Info                  [msoobe.exe] License for msoobe-FirstLogonAnim-MayBeDisabled is false
2016-10-24 11:08:47, Error                [msoobe.exe] Failed to run OOBE Host with hr=0x800700572016-10-24 11:08:47,

The device would go through all upgrade phases and fail during the Microsoft Out Of Box Experience (msoobe) after loading the Region Plugin.
Further troubleshooting can be difficult. We ended up connecting the device to a network and use a remote Windows Debugger to step through msoobe initializing. This is where we realized that a local of "en-150" was used where we typically see "en-US" or different locale. "en-150" relates to a locale "English (Europe)", a new option introduced in the first release of Windows 10 (1507). Further debugging revealed that the Out Of Box Experience would crash due to a missing value with E_INVALIDARG [0x80070057].

Workaround

The workaround is to not use the "English (Europe)" locale, technically it could also be a different locale. In our case the "English (Europe) was used. Use the following steps to change this for all accounts:

  • Go to Regional Settings
  • Change the Format to English (United States) - or anything other than “English (Europe)” or the one you are currently using.
    • You can also select a different language or change any of the date/time formats per your needs
  • Select the Administrative tab and hit Copy Settings
  • Select the bottom two checkboxes and hit OK.
  • Reboot the PC and start the Windows Anniversary Update. Windows should upgrade.

We need to get this fixed, in the meantime the workaround hopefully helps you upgrade.
In case this post helped you - consider leaving a reply.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 14, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    November 14, 2016
    This solved this issue for me. It first appeared when I manually installed the Anniversary Update shortly after it was released. Luckily I managed to revert back to my previous installation. Recently however, the update was installed as a regular scheduled update and the same thing happened again. I could again revert back to my previous installation, only to find out the 1607 update was ready to be installed again after the next reboot. I was about the re-install Windows when I heard about this solution to this very annoying problem. Thanks.
  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    November 29, 2016
    Nice article! I was experimenting with the userlocale "en-BE" and I'm seeing the same behavior.After restoring the original build and changing the userlocale back to "nl-BE", I was able to upgrade to Build 1607 of Windows 10.I will try to upgrade to the next Build using the userlocale "en-BE" to see if the issue will be fixed.PS: Using the value "en-BE" in the unattend.xml file will also result in an error when trying to perform a clean install of Windows 10 Build 1607. Probably these "issues" are related to each other?! Either way, we won't be using this locale for production. :)
  • Anonymous
    December 12, 2016
    For the non-technichal mass of humanity, isn't there an easier fix for this? How does Microsoft put out an update that causes these problems.
  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2017
    At last! This fixed the reboot loop I was experiencing every time I've tried upgrading from 1507 for over a year now.My format was "English (Europe)". Windows 10 N.One thing is strange. I'm quite sure I was running Windows 10 Home N. Now it's showing that I have Pro version.
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2017
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2017
    Having a couple of dozen PCs with build 1511 and userlocale “en-BE”, I started to see the boot-loop issue in August 2016, when build 1607 came in via the Windows Update.Since it occured on PCs from different brands, even with all possible hardware disabled in the Bios and via MSConfig, + all (Video- and other) adapters removed, my conclusion was that it was not hardware related, but caused by a bug in build 1607.For the record: I had it both on the W10 Pro and Enterprise editions, did not test it on the Home edition.None of the solutions proposed on the forums in August 2016 allowed to do a successfull upgrade to build 1607, so I did a 'Revert to previous build', and selected 'Defer upgrades' in the Windows Updates settings. Since this option postpones the upgrade to build 1607 for six months, I was thinking that in the meantime there would become more info on the internet to solve the problem.Now, six months later, begin February, the PCs with build 1511 started one after the other automatically to upgrade to build 1607, with the endless boot-loop as a result. Going back to the previous build was still possible, but now only as a short-time solution, since the upgrade to build 1607 could'nt be postponed anymore. due to that, within a couple of days after reverting to the previous build, Windows started again with the disaster-upgrade to build 1607.(on a Monday morning, when we came in, six PCs showed the endless boot-loop.. )To my surprise, after six months, there was still no usable info on the internet to solve this problem, except for this article, that we luckily did find. Now that I know the real cause via this article, everyting fits and is logical: compared to the number of people, using a 'Standard' locale, those with the new 'English (Europe)' locale are very limited in number, giving not that much questions in the blogs about this issue during the past six months.Anyway, a BIG BIG THANKS to Pieter and his team for your research to tackle this problem!I just hope that this bug will be solved in the next build (1703 ?). I know now perfectly how to prevent this from happening, but it still can give a lot of headaches to other people.. :-/And.. the userlocale “en-BE”, is something we waited many years for, as we have a lot of people from abroad in our organisation.I will be nice if we can finally use this extra option without causing further troubles!Peter- - -
  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2017
    Thank you sooooo much!!!!!!! :DIt did work great, you have no idea how much I'm grateful to you!!!After dozens of tries, months of failures and rolling back to previous builds I was expecting a huge failure of the OS, you just did my day!!! :DThank you again, you're my hero!!!
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2017
    So after many months I took my notebook out of its dusty bag to replace its broken battery. Obviously the first thing to do after putting in and charging the new battery was to install the missing updates. And then it just kept restarting, so I reverted back to the previous build to give it another go... you can guess the rest.Thank you so much, Pieter, after changing the locale the third upgrade was a success. I would have never figured this out on my own.Someone should fix this though, build 1607 is getting old and deferring upgrades will lose its charm to me if old and known issues stay unresolved. (And everybody knows that a feature with no charm is not truly a feature.)
  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2018
    Thank you for the great explanation !Although this thread probably deadI had the same issue while deploying windows 10 1607 with MDT. ( EN-BE)It seems that this has been fixed in build 1709. I deploy;ed several devices now with en-be regional settings and have not encountered errors during OOBE.