VirtualBox Windows 10 Upgrade Error C1900101-20017

posted Apr 4, 2016, 8:13 AM by Tom Pedersen   [ updated Apr 4, 2016, 8:16 AM ]
http://ventures.tpedersen.net/projects/legend
A quick note to share the tweaks I used to upgrade a VirtualBox Windows 7 VM to Windows 10 after many attempts to get around update error C1900101-20017.  Simply thought I'd share my experiences in case others are struggling with the same frustrating issue.

In a Nutshell

For the past few months I've periodically attempted to upgrade a simple VirtualBox Win7 VM to Win10.  It is a very minimal system used exclusively for testing, but ended up being amazingly difficult to update - always failing at initial Win10 reboot (frozen animated win10 logo) with:  "Error(s) found:  C1900101-20017 Windows Update encountered an unknown error".

Config Details

  • VirtualBox v5.0.2 r102196 (running under Linux Mint 17)
  • 32-bit Win7 Ultimate Upgraded to Win10 Pro (simple test machine, 1.5g mem, single CPU, 60g VDI)
  • No significant apps installed - Windows Defender AV + 1 or 2 utility programs - VERY vanilla
Final Tweaks

Many attempts over the past few months, beginning with matching the VM specs to Windows 10 requirements to disabling network & antivirus and downloading/upgrading from Win10 Image and finally playing with VM System Settings until the update actually worked!  

In the end, I THINK the following VM System settings got past the error:
  • System/Motherboard tab:  Checked "Enable I/O APIC"
  • System/Acceleration tab:  Paravirtualization Interface changed to "Default" (I previously had "Legacy" set)
Screenshots of final/working System tabs in case I tweaked something else - click to enlarge:

 System Motherboard Settings
 
 System Processor Settings
  
 System Acceleration Settings


Just a quick entry here because this error drove me nuts for quite a while - I hope it helps.