Thank all of you for you help.
The failed system was recently installed using the Windows Media Creation tool. It was activated with my digital license on file with Microsoft. It was the insider version.
Just to clarify. I have la legal license for three Windows 10 installations.
The PC I use every day is this Dell 755, which is a replacement for my older Dell the went bad. In addition, I have two other machines with licensed Windows 10.
All three licenses are for earlier updates to windows 7 pro 322, Windows 7 home 64 and Windows 8 home 64. This was back at an earlier time when the upgrade were available. These were registered with Microsoft and have digital license. I do not use a product key top activate. (Windows 7 requires the key.)
(Recently I thought I had to use the Product key on my Gateway, went through a lot of work to find it, and then just before I was about to enter it, it tells me the thing is already activated.)
My Dell 755 has been having trouble with Windows 10 using the insider build. I do not know exactly what happened to it. So today I retrieved an ISO I got earlier this year and installed it using
Rufus. Right away in connected to Microsoft and confirmed b\my digital license.
So now I am using 1709 on the Dell 755, but it is build 16299.125 mad seems to work fine. Earlier I ha To repeat, this time I used Rufus. And Windows is i the 32 bit pro version.
My guess is that the updates did not work right. I am not able to confirm that was the problem. Normally I let Windows 10 do updates whenever it wants.