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Windows 8 to Windows 8.1

Hello Community!

 

After many hours of listening to Customer Service for Microsoft and googling, and coming up with nothing, I decided to go to the community that has consistently—from what I have seen personally!—helped me and others out by actually reading and helping.

 

So here's the story...I'm trying to help someone install Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 but updating stays at 0% for a few hours. We have been trying for a whole week now. A few days ago, after hours of "installing" the updates, Windows 8 restarted to configure the computer. However, once it reached 100% it would fail and revert its changes, putting us back at needing to update.

 

So we decided to do a fresh install today hoping it would fix it, but now installing remains at 0% for hours and we no longer get the restart-failure problem—which I guess is a good thing—but now updating doesn't seem to work at all, not even to fail. I'm not even sure, even though the progress bar is moving but remaining at 0%, that it is even doing anything. I checked its service in Task Manager and its cache is slowly (very slowly) climbing but no % is gained.

 

We tried contacting support (useless) and they just kept telling us to run troubleshooting or reinstall completely, as if they weren't even listening to our problem. Next we spent a few hours googling solutions and found lots of people with the same problem. I tried all that we found and nothing ever worked. Some of the things we tried:

 

  • Fresh install
  • Windows Update Component Reset
  • Deleted the "download" folder within C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution
  • Ran sfc /scannow (came back good)
  • Tried turning off firewall, anti-viruses and all non-Microsoft services via msconfig
  • Tried manually install only it scans for updates with the same problem
  • Ran the Fix It program
  • Clean boot
  • Tried restarting the Updater service from task manager

 

If anyone could help us out, I would appreciate it. I'm getting really annoyed with Windows 8 and customer service telling me the same thing over and over again, only to tell me to buy a new key.

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well thiers one option left,

you legaly bought a windows 8 key

windows 8.1 is a free upgrade

The system isn't working clearly.

Just pirate the update, or is not technically pirating cause you bought it? whatever just "legally Pirate" it, since nothing else is working.

download the same version of windows 8.1 as 8 iso from the magic place on the internet, then fresh install, then magically activate.

Thier is nothing wrong doing this and no point in paying for something that is free.

 

 

 

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It won't allow me to upgrade to 8.1 without updating 8 though.

|  The United Empire of Earth Wants You | The Stormborn (ongoing build; 90% done)  |  Skyrim Mods Recommendations  LTT Blue Forum Theme! | Learning Russian! Blog |
|"They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”Tupac Shakur  | "Half of writing history is hiding the truth"Captain Malcolm Reynolds | "Museums are racist."Michelle Obama | "Slap a word like "racist" or "nazi" on it and you'll have an army at your back."MSM Logic | "A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another"Jesus Christ | "I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."Jefferson Davis |

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It won't allow me to upgrade to 8.1 without updating 8 though.

well thiers one option left,

you legaly bought a windows 8 key

windows 8.1 is a free upgrade

The system isn't working clearly.

Just pirate the update, or is not technically pirating cause you bought it? whatever just "legally Pirate" it, since nothing else is working.

download the same version of windows 8.1 as 8 iso from the magic place on the internet, then fresh install, then magically activate.

Thier is nothing wrong doing this and no point in paying for something that is free.

 

 

Fresh Install windows 8.1 from a usb iso, then crack it.

Microsoft needs to fix thier shit.

 

 

 

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I had that same problem....sorta. I had to shut down the computer and retry to download it

 

Also, that is probably the best profile pic evar! :D Ocarina of Time FTW!

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How would a pirated update work? I would hate to have to take that option because the person who owns the computer does sensitive work on it and the people she works for scans her computer...would hate for them to think she stole something or the like.

 

 

@mr.skyrim_pc

 

We tried shutting the system down numerous times. Unfortunately it did not help us at all. :(

|  The United Empire of Earth Wants You | The Stormborn (ongoing build; 90% done)  |  Skyrim Mods Recommendations  LTT Blue Forum Theme! | Learning Russian! Blog |
|"They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”Tupac Shakur  | "Half of writing history is hiding the truth"Captain Malcolm Reynolds | "Museums are racist."Michelle Obama | "Slap a word like "racist" or "nazi" on it and you'll have an army at your back."MSM Logic | "A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another"Jesus Christ | "I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."Jefferson Davis |

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How would a pirated update work? I would hate to have to take that option because the person who owns the computer does sensitive work on it and the people she works for scans her computer...would hate for them to think she stole something or the like.

 

 

@mr.skyrim_pc

 

We tried shutting the system down numerous times. Unfortunately it did not help us at all. :(

the crack activates windows, thats it., , im using it, cause same issue happened to me, its not deletable from scans, or at least any ive tried.

 

 

 

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the crack activates windows, thats it., , im using it, cause same issue happened to me, its not deletable from scans, or at least any ive tried.

 

So pirating the update was the only way you got around it?

 

There has to be something else I can do... :(

|  The United Empire of Earth Wants You | The Stormborn (ongoing build; 90% done)  |  Skyrim Mods Recommendations  LTT Blue Forum Theme! | Learning Russian! Blog |
|"They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”Tupac Shakur  | "Half of writing history is hiding the truth"Captain Malcolm Reynolds | "Museums are racist."Michelle Obama | "Slap a word like "racist" or "nazi" on it and you'll have an army at your back."MSM Logic | "A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another"Jesus Christ | "I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."Jefferson Davis |

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Alright, I managed to get it working after hours of irritation. I'll try to record my steps here in case someone else needs help. It took some steps from earlier but in a different order.

 

  • New Install (erase everything)
  • Open msconfig. Turn off all non-Microsoft Services, apply. Turn off anti virse service. Turn off updater service. Apply.
  • Turn off automatic update and install for updates.
  • Delete content within C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution. Restart computer.
  • Open command prompt and do the following (make sure to run CMD as Admin!):  sfc /scannow then  (if the first comes back "clean") net stop wuauserv
  • Run Updater Reset: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9830262
  • Restart computer
  • Try Updates

Now for me, and apparently for a lot of other people, this whole process takes hours and hours. For me to go from 0% to 100%, it took nearly six hours. Once you boot back into Windows 8, the app store will look different and you can now install Windows 8.1 without being told to update Windows 8. The download is nearly 4GB and took five hours to install. Then it took another four hours to complete the configuration of Windows 8.1 after the reboot. No more failures to configure Windows or anything else like that.

 

I will edit this post with all the bookmarks of "solutions" I applied altogether in case the steps above aren't very detailed for people to follow.

 

 

Anyways...what an ugly hassle. I hope Windows 10 won't be as shitty to install and apply maintenance to.

  •  

|  The United Empire of Earth Wants You | The Stormborn (ongoing build; 90% done)  |  Skyrim Mods Recommendations  LTT Blue Forum Theme! | Learning Russian! Blog |
|"They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”Tupac Shakur  | "Half of writing history is hiding the truth"Captain Malcolm Reynolds | "Museums are racist."Michelle Obama | "Slap a word like "racist" or "nazi" on it and you'll have an army at your back."MSM Logic | "A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another"Jesus Christ | "I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."Jefferson Davis |

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The update didn't cause any problems until a few months ago where if you run all updates at once, it will cause a corruption and then revert chanages. But if you do small batches, then the corruptoin will not occur. When all updates are finished, then Windows store will show 8.1 and it will let you download and install. I've tried to narrow it down by writting down all the KB IDs to see which batch will cause the corruptions, but it never happened, so it's quite difficult to see which update or set of updates is causing it.

MS support is useless, when you visit their support answers it's like the tech person isn't even reading the question, just copying and pasting some answer from their book. Giving an answer that has nothing to do with the question.

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