My licensed Win10 Pro x64 on Dell 5580 laptop is stuck on 21H1, 19043.1645 since some months. Windows just won't update in any way. A number of updates have come after this and they all download but while installing they get stuck at 20% and then go to 100% and fail with some error. I checked many solutions on the net but nothing works. Disk Clean-Up does not clean the Windows Update files. It shows as some 3.5Gb even if I have deleted the SoftwareDistribution folder. I tried the WindowsUpdateMiniTool also but it also fails to update. I have many software installed and some important licensed software too, plus lot of settings done the way I needed over the past few years so I don't want to do a fresh install, nor am I planning to update to Win11. I read on the net that an in-place upgrade is recommended for such scenarios but I am not sure of how to go about this. Which ISO should I download and is the update / upgrade to be done from within Windows or through a Rufus bootable USB? Or is there any other way to resolve the issue?
I downloaded the latest ISO, mounted it and did an upgrade from within Windows. My system drive and data driver were all Bitlocker encrypted and I did not turn off Bitlocker. It took a while but my laptop is now on latest Windows version, updates working and some other things which were broken also working. All apps and data are unaltered and everything works as it did. Thanks to everyone for their help.