New SSD and Windows update problems

akb8812 · February 5, 2015

So Hi. First time poster, long time reader (and watcher) of Linus Tech Tips. I work in IT and I'm facing a problem I have never faced nor have my co workers.

Earlier this week I installed an mSata SSD (840 EVO) drive in my Acer laptop and did a clean install of Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64bit. Worked awesome and I was really happy with it, until yesterday when I was doing Windows Update. Everything was going along nicely and it went through the restart and installed updates until 90% or so, then it came with an error that said "We couldn't complete the updates. Undoing changes" I waited for a while for it to finish which it never did. So I rebooted, it just returned to that screen. I tried to boot into Safe Mode, same thing. Stuck in a loop.

I managed to do a "reset" and returned the computer to a freshly installed state. Decided to try again just to see if it was a one time thing but no, happened again. I'm at work now and the computer is on and running hopefully it just fixes itself and will be OK when I get home.

Google told me that this problem was common with the "8.1.1" update from last spring but that update isn't listed in the list of updates I'm trying to install. So it's not that.

Since this only happened after I put in the SSD I'm thinking that's the reason. One post on the internet said that it could be one partition being too small, doesn't make sense to me. Could it be because the mSata is listed as "Disk 1" and my data drive is "Disk 0" ? Never had any issues with that before.

Any ideas?

Dimwitted · February 5, 2015

It *shouldn't* but it's Windows, Jake. I would unhook the hdd and do the update and see if that makes a difference. Before that tho, check the website and see if the mSata is set up as a cache drive. It, again, shouldn't be but laptops are screwy things and anything's possible.

akb8812 · February 5, 2015

It *shouldn't* but it's Windows, Jake. I would unhook the hdd and do the update and see if that makes a difference. Before that tho, check the website and see if the mSata is set up as a cache drive. It, again, shouldn't be but laptops are screwy things and anything's possible.

Windows runs perfectly on it though. It's just the updating problem. So I don't see why it should be a cache drive with a perfect Windows installation. I *think* the BIOS on this model lets me disable the HDD. I'll try that first

Also, kudos for the Chinatown reference