Trying to fix Windows 7 which will not start, with ultimate goal of upgrading to Windows 10. Do I have any options other than a clean install of 10?

I'm working with an HP Pavilion running Windows 7 Home Premium x64. The PC is remote; I'm in New England, the PC is my brother's and he's on the Gulf Coast. I've been trying to assist through TeamViewer and over the phone.

Attempts to get the computer to update to Windows 10 failed with the following error:

0x8007001F - 0x20006 the installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with error during REPLICATE_OC operation.

Windows Update on that Win 7 installation was failing to install a monthly rollup of fixes with an error 0x80070026.

I ran DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth and it found some corruption in three files C:\Windows\servicing\packages, so I downloaded the corresponding standalone installers for the affected updates, putting them into the folder where the updated Windows Update Readiness Tool (WURT) could find them, and it fixed the corrupted files, confirmed by the log file after it ran.

When I retried the failed Windows Updates after that, they succeeded and requested a restart of the system to complete the installation.

At this point, any restarts fail to load Windows 7. No more remote login for me.

PROCESS1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED
... other stuff ... 
Technical Information:
*** STOP: 0x0000006B (0x00000000, ...)

I'm still hoping to accomplish an Upgrade from 7 to 10. I created a bootable USB and hoped to be able to upgrade Win 7 on the hard drive from the bootable Windows 10 Installation USB. It appears I cannot. I can only do a full install of Windows 10 to replace Windows 7.

I don't have a System Restore disk for this system. We have a USB that is a bootable Windows 7 Home Premium x64 Installation image. Booting to that does not allow us to perform a repair or upgrade either.

It seems an "Upgrade" or update requires you to run the installation setup from within a live instance of Windows that you want to upgrade. The only option when booting from a USB is to do a full install that will also require a reinstall of all apps, as well as a loss of settings and perhaps some files.

Any other attempts at a repair through the options given when the boot fails have gone nowhere. It always seems to end with the above error and an option to reboot or perform a system recovery to its factory state which is a no-go. All Safe Mode options fail as well. During my remote sessions, when I did to updates, it did create restore points, now the restore options tell me there are no restore points.

I'm looking for any recommendations on ways to repair the existing Win 7 installation to get it to ultimately upgrade to Windows 10 without having to wipe things out. If it was my computer, I'd be willing to wipe it clean and install 10. But my brother doesn't have a solid backup and is afraid he could lose things if we hit it with the big hammer.

You can open it up and mount the drive on another machine. From there you can just get the files you need and further repair the disk. Cables are cheap but you might find one to borrow. More here