We've seen this pattern come up a few times and it's worth flagging in case your team runs into it: a Windows 11 in-place upgrade (running setup.exe from a Media Creation Tool USB to keep apps + files) stalls indefinitely at "Getting updates" — 46%. No error, no progress, fresh USBs don't help, Rufus vs. MCT doesn't matter.

What's actually happening

The "Getting updates" phase pulls Dynamic Update content from Microsoft before the upgrade kicks off. When that channel hiccups (transient CDN issue, proxy/SSL inspection on the network, or a corrupt SoftwareDistribution cache), setup will sit at 46% forever rather than fail out.

Workaround

Run setup from an elevated command prompt with Dynamic Update disabled:

D:\setup.exe /Auto Upgrade /DynamicUpdate Disable

(replace D:\ with whatever drive letter your install media mounted as)

This skips the pre-flight update pull and uses only what's on the install media. After the upgrade completes, Windows Update will pull current cumulative updates normally — you're not leaving the machine unpatched, just deferring the update step until after the OS is back up.

Belt-and-suspenders before you run it

• net stop wuauserv → delete C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\* → net start wuauserv
• Disconnect from any network that does SSL inspection (a lot of guest/segmented networks will silently break the MCT update fetch)
• Make sure the install media matches the architecture and edition of the installed OS

Source / further reading: community thread documenting the same symptom on a clean B560 / i9 build — r/pchelp discussion

Has your team hit this on other hardware? Drop a comment with the model + network setup — useful to know if there's a common thread.