Help, Windows 8 refusing to install major update!

And just out of curiosity, what do you base your suspicion on? I don't even see a hint of it anywhere? No tricks, no gotchas, just a legitimate question.

And it's funny how when XP first came out it was called the "Fisher Price" OS and plenty of other nasty things, but a decade later there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when people were finally shuffled off it. If you looked past the surface when XP first came out, you'd find a pretty solid OS that laid a lot of important groundwork for Windows versions to come, most importantly of which was retiring the old DOS line of Windows and moving everyone to the NT kernel which had a proper security model. Vista then ripped out huge swathes of the GUI, replacing the decades old CPU driven GDI+, with a much more modern GPU driven Aero. It also started enforcing a lot of good security practices that had been around for ages, but never enforced, made a number of enhancements to the process scheduler to work better with multi-core CPUs, security around drivers was hardened. It may not have had a lot of flashy whiz-bang features for people incapable of looking past the surface, but it had a lot of very important and necessary changes for future versions of Windows. Windows 8 is much the same. While not quite as momentous as Vista, Windows 8 is laying the groundwork to let Microsoft consolidate it's desktop, tablet and phone platforms. Even the Xbox One to a somewhat lesser degree. It's unfortunate that so many people look just at tifkam, the one odd and questionable decision out of the entire OS, which is trivial to ignore if you it's not your thing, and base their entire opinion of the OS on that. Theirs is not a world I would want to live in, because there are so many hidden gems to be found when you give things half a chance.

Hi everyone:

When I first purchased my laptop, a Toshiba which has a i5 dual 64 with 6gb memory, it had win 7 Pro installed but also came with a special feature where I was also able to install win 8 upgrade. This provision was special and it was included online. There was no cost to it either. I really liked win 7 because it was a straight forward OS. Prior to that I was using win xp and that too was a great OS. It didn't have the bells and whistles as win 7. I installed win 8 and 8.1. At the time, win 8 was a little flaky but it was OK. I love to experiment with downloads, usually with a good source where the programs are tested. The problem occurred when with certain downloads had certain attachments to it. I usually watch what I am doing because I go to the advance mode and check what was being added and decline the extras like toolbars and other search engines and so on. Once in awhile, I have skipped this and lo and behold, I had not 1 but 3 toolbars which I did not want. such as Yahoo.com and ask.com. There was one that I did not recognize; I forgot which it is and it did not show in my uninstaller. I had to do it another way. I didn't know how to do that. I searched for ways and I did come up with a toolbar remover. I still had the problem. The other 2 toolbars I was able to remove it. I search some more and there were instructions given which were quite a few pages and they had several steps. If you couldn't remove it from one step, then you try the others. I had to go to step 3 and then there were registry changes. I don't like to go into the registry because one mistake can crash your computer. I stopped right there and get online help. Believe me when I say that I tried everything and I was advised to reinstall win 8. When I went to the MS site, I was able to get the wizard and enter my product code which was accepted. So now I am on the way to get win 8 reinstalled. Before they could start the install, it asked me for a few questions and I chose to do a clean install with no data and whatever. I opted to do it and when I clicked on OK and a few rules to accept the agreement, I get a message that unable to install right now and try again later. I did this several times and I still got the message to try later. I called MS and I was told by an engineer that the online win 8 was no longer available and had to purchase win 8 reinstall. It didn't cost much, maybe $16.95, shipping included so I got it. I installed it and it was successful and installed win 8.1 upgrade. That seemed to work as well. Shortly after I get a BSOD and I knew that is the ultimate crash. I forgot to say before I go too far, I did try to restore back to a point where it began to give me trouble. It was unable to restore and reverted back to where I am. I did this two or three times and I went into safe mode to it. It couldn't even fix it there.
so what I did was to instert the MS win 8 disk to do a clean install. I though it did but for reason it added files where it shouldn't have. My computer was bad. Enough of this so I did a clean factory install to my old win 7. Now it is working just fine. I have written a long story and I apologize for that. I still want to install win 8 but I am leery in using the win 8 disk. I would have to buy another one. Maybe I will stick with win 7 until there is no more support and then by that time, maybe MS will come out with a win 9? It's too bad that these problems occur. Never had a problem with win xp. MS should have stayed with it and just update with all security programs. Of course I do have an opportunity to go Linux or maybe Apple will feel sorry for our PC's and come out with a MAC OS. lol

Bye for now and hope you have time to read this.

ezymel

Mel - a tale of woe indeed, and notwithstanding any observations from others who haven't experienced any of these problems, Win 8 has been a total balls-up from the outset.
It's a carbon copy of the fiasco AKA Win Vista, where literally millions of windows users suddenly found themselves in alien territory, and even with some knowlege of troubleshooting, found themselves unable to rectify the faults in that OS that MS code writers had left unsolved.
Vista was the answer to a question that most Windows users had never asked in the first place, hurried along by internal politics at Redmond caused by Billy G taking a back seat prior to his retirement; okay, XP had been top of the heap for many years, but many (alleged) high-fliers at MS saw an XP replacement as something to aspire to to move their careers along.
The resultant free-for-all came up with a system that wasn't properly thought through, wasn't developed properly and didn't do the job it was supposed to do; small wonder then that millions of PC's that had been built and shipped as "Vista Ready" were delivered to people like myself to have personal data cached and "downgraded" to XP to make them workable.
Win 7 came along on the back of some seriously bad press, and was immediately accepted as a proper OS, without any of the glitches and foibles of Vista - something that Vista SHOULD have been to begin with - and sales took off like a Saturn five.
So far, so good; now, Billy G is out of the frame and the spottyfaces start to take over with yet ANOTHER replacement - driven this time by Stevey Ballmer who is the original hardware freak; HE sees that Android and iOS have a good two-year lead in the handheld and tablet market, and HE wants some of that action - like yesterday.
So, history repeats itself - for much the same reasons - with Win 8, which was marketed as a "cover-all" OS for handhelds, touchscreens AND desktops alike - which we all know is a virtual impossibility to achieve with the current code setup; touchscreen has been around for years in shops and multi-stores on their checkouts, but it's completely incompatible with normal coding - C++ or whatever, so apart from a total rewrite of the whole shebang it isn't gonna work - end of.
Fair enough, W8.1 was an improvement of sorts - although it was a year late - and W8.1.1 is even better - for the desktop user it's now nearly as friendly as XP was, TEN YEARS AGO!
Bill Gates, if you're still watching and listening, hear this, mate; if you want to develop a product for handhelds and kiddies toys, then DO it, but never forget that the vast majority of comms and internet users, servers and desktop PC's are the bread and butter of your primary business, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
Mel, I wish you well - sorry for hijacking your thread!

Hi jaybee:

Thanks for your feelings on this matter. Once again I do have win 8.1. It did take me awhile to get it all set up. So far, it seems to function OK. Boot times and shutdowns are fast and don't have to wait until other things get in the way to slow down the computer. I also installed the START button but don't like it very much. The right side of the start menu is so faded out, that I barely can see it. How can you make the background a very light blue and throw white text on it? There must be a way to make it darker. Any clues? You mention win 8.1.1. Is that the latest? I see no mention of it on the browsers. That is too bad how MS has changed so many things. I believe the programmers who worked on it were rushed and Bill
Gates wanted to put it out. Look at how many changes came after win xp. The fill in after which I don't remember what it was called which was so unstable and didn't last very long. Win 7 which is still a nice stable program but doesn't have all the toys that win 8 have and now 8.1. or maybe 8.1.1 or shortly will be 9.0 or whatever.

Take care,

ezymel

You'll have a choice, when upgrading, to format your OS drive; do that and make a clean install.

I just did this on an old W7 machine; the new install was an update over a freshly formatted hard drive.

@rickdev67
I purchased win8 pro (upgrade version) over a year ago when it was specially priced @ 39 bucks and promptly put it on the shelf and let it collect dust. At that price why not. Well, a few days ago, I decided to use it on a system that was dual booting win7 pro 64 and XP pro 64. I decided to nuke the XP install and keep win7 and continue the dual boot. These installs are on separate hd's on the machine.

I will mention it now that shortly after I bought win8 upgrade, a work-around to install it cleanly without evidence of a previous operating system had been discovered and the procedure was available on the net. So a year later, after doing new research, there are multiple work-around's described. Even different strategies to doing this with systems (like mine) that dual boot on separate HD's. Just search yourself on the procedures if curious.

I decided to NOT upgrade over the XP install. Instead, to format that drive and do the fresh upgrade of win8. I now see I made the right decision (as evidenced by this threads topic). The funny thing is, after I installed the upgrade version of win8 on a freshly formatted HD, I never had to perform any of the work-around's. It took the serial and Micro$oft validated the system without complaint.

The only trouble I ran into was the boot record not instantly recognizing the dual-boot setup but I was prepared for that. Again, there are several ways to resolve this but I discovered a very simple procedure myself. I inserted the win8 disc in the drive and booted. Win8 came up and asked me what I wanted to do. I selected "repair". On the next page, there was an option for win8 to diagnose and repair whatever problem it detected. I selected this option. About 15 seconds later, it re-booted and when it started back up, it was fixed and the option to load both operating systems was available.

It had placed win8 on the C drive and win7 on the D drive and amended the MBR to allow the dual-boot option. Originally, win7 was on C and win8 was on D... so it reversed them and then wrote the new boot record. This has got to be the easiest install of any windows product I've done in almost 20 years.

On a side note, win8 is very wonky for new users (like me) but after the upgrade to 8.1 plus the installation of the free "Classic Shell" program for the start option, it looks and performs just like win7 and I'm very happy I did this. Now if there were only Audigy2 drivers for win8.................

I read your post and good work there.

Just a quick note about C: drives and D: drives when installing Windows.

Windows, (any OS version), will always consider itself to be installed on drive C: When you open Windows Explorer or My Computer within any Windows installation, it will list itself on drive C: and any other installed Windows OSes on other drives, (or partitions), generally in order of available drive letters, as discovered by the OS currently being used.

It makes it considerably easier for each Windows install to consider itself as installed on the C: drive because all of the programming of the OS is set up for that.

This means you could have dual boot or multi-boot Windows OSes installed, and as you log in to each one, they will all treat themselves as installed on the C: drive.

This makes keeping track of which 'actual' drive or partition Windows is installed on slightly less intuitive than otherwise might be expected.

Just thought you would like to know.

Mark

Mark, what you're describing makes perfect sense to me if each separate OS install is blind to the other.

I had a decision to make concerning this before I started. Should I select which OS to log into in the bios boot order @ startup.... or allow windows to manage the MBR so they see each other after the bios loads and then select which one to use. I chose the second option.

In the original configuration with win7 and XP, it was set up the same as the second scenario. Both OS were visible to windows, you could access each one regardless of which one was currently loaded, and they were each given permanent drive status at all times. Win7 was on the C drive, XP was on the D drive. When I logged into XP and accessed the HD, it was listed as the D drive.

Now on the flip side, if you install win7 on one HD, get done and then unplug it...
then...
Install win8 on the other drive, they will both be installed on C drives.

however, after connecting both drives back up to the PS and MB, You would then have to select which OS to load at the bios prompt since windows has not been configured to give you this option. There are people who like this option to load from boot order since getting rid of one install is a simple format. No fuss no muss.

The way mine is set up, when the bios is done and windows starts, it see's two OS's and then asks you to choose which to run. Under Win8's controlled MBR, there is a new graphical android metro interface that pops up that is much slicker than previous OS's with additional settings options and a modern look.

I think what you're describing comes from dual-booting in the way that I don't do. I imagine that the other HD in your scenario would always be listed as the D drive with a dormant OS install that the current system doesn't even see as such, just a windows folder.

Here is the screen I see at start-up (blue image):
http://askubuntu.com/questions/381543/dual-boot-selector-like-windows

and my XP system. I often install to a different drive than C drive, it foils some of the sloppier virus and Trojan attacks, since they expect it to be C drive all the time.

http://glenburniemd.net/CNET/Tell_My_XP.jpg

If one does not have a touch screen, who needs Windows 8?

Seems to me that many people who load or buy a computer with Windows 8 end up loading the Classic Shell and reverting to a Windows 7 presentation.

I can see that Windows 7 is going to be the New Windows XP.

I have 8.0 on a stick. I don't have 8.1 anywhere. When I download the update do I get a full O/S that I can load on a stick? If I do and I do a clean install, does it take my 8.0 id? How does it verify that? Have you actually done it or is it just theory?

I did an upgrade of a system, that I don't really use, that I first used as a precaution when I first was afraid of Windows 8 and when I did the upgrade to 8.1, I don't remember it doing anything but taking off and doing the upgrade. I don't think I had the option of creating a stick with the O/S on it like I did with Windows 8.

Also there is no rush to upgrade to Windows 8.1 and do the update if you are able to get along with Windows 8. Windows 8.0 will get all the normal updates. It is only 8.1 that will not get the normal updates if you don't run "The Update".

Actually have no problems ever did updatede in our computer lab we had on ou 4 pc with 8.1 20 or 25 update which was alot as usually 8 only has few. Like 8.1 better sure every one else will if and when they learn iy wellThe rest of our PC have mac 3 or 4 few dual boot xp to 7 and some 7 to 8
All run well as we have a team who does this 2wed of every month.

Good luck with 8.1 suggest buiying the book visual book for learing windows not dummies waste of money

Ellen307

Back in February of 2013, a Windows 8 update trashed my Windows 8 upgrade installation. This was an unrecoverable crash that prevented all boot attempts. I did a format by putting my drive in another computer and then proceeded to attempt re-installation. My key was only good for an upgrade. I called MS support and after about 30 minutes on the telephone, I had a key for a fresh installation of Windows 8. It appears that Microsoft made no provisions for a clean install of the Windows 8 upgrade. If you try to fresh install with a Windows 8 upgrade key be prepared for failure.

There are several strategies to fresh install win8 (upgrade) on a formatted hard drive without issue. All available on the net.

I have never had Win7 create a 500MB partition but I have had Win 8 do that.

If he is talking about a system that came with Windows 7, then bought a Windows 8 license, you still have to install Windows 8 before you can update to Windows 8.1, because the product key will not validate. When updating to the latest Windows 8.1 version, you have to install ALL the Windows 8 updates available INCLUDING those two mentioned by Microsoft, then the update should be applied flawlessly and to the latest release.

Hello everyone. Has "jaybee48" said, Just don't bother.
This same exact problem epened to me when I upgraded from Windows Vista Home Premium, to windows 7 and later on, I upgraded my hard drive from 500GB to 750GB and NO more updates were possible.
Contacting Mocrosoft did not work because I did not want to pay well over $100.00 for the help that they would provide. They told me that if I didi not want to pay for that I could by a new Windows version and install that.
My only solution was to reinstall the 500GB back and problem solved. Updates were back.

It's not rocket science!

If you have a problem (and I didn't because I did all the backup stuff that Microsoft suggested, etc) just call Microsoft and they'll walk you through it.
Microsoft is one of THE most helpful companies in the whole bloody world, don't listen to these guys who keep running them down, they're mostly just 'big-noting' themselves... (Aussie term for *******..)

MS I mean.

Dafydd.

Are you calling all of the people who are having trouble with this update liars? Are you also calling everyone who has trouble with Microsoft "support" liars? Are you insane?

I believe the answers to all of three questions is yes.

The latest version 8.1.1 makes it far easier to use the OS with keyboard and mouse and still is great to use on my touch screen tablets. It brings back the 'x' in the right hand top corner to kill an app, even the 'metro' style apps. It works with multiple screens so that you can drag and drop all apps, even 'metro' from one to the other. the toolbar and start buttons are visible, even when using 'metro' style apps and the functionality of the start button is greatly improved over the previous versions. Additionally, the OS is generally more agile than Windows 7 was, even on hardware that originally had XP on it. I have moved to Win8.x on all the computers in my home, which were originally either all XP or W7. Had no problems with any of them. That being said, I did not 'upgrade' to get to Win8. I installed clean copies and have never had problems getting to the latest version.

I can empathize with you here for sure. I would offer though that a flavour of Linux is worth considering as well. I have a client who was bringing me his laptop every couple of weeks to run all the updates to Windows 7, anti virus software, Adobe stuff etc - it was all a bit much for him. I dual booted him into Ubuntu and he's happier than he's ever been, and safer online as well.

There is an email newsletter called Windows Secrets that explains the whole thing in last week's issue (April 24). Over the long run it is better to have this info. It apparently only affects people who upgraded to Win8 from Win7. If you started with Win8 the update should work without the procedures described in the article.
It is worth a few bucks a year for this newsletter. There is also a free version but a lot of good stuff is in the paid version. There is no defined cost, just make a donation. I usually give them ten bucks, and it has been well worth it.

My HP computer came with 8.1 installed. I have the problem too.

I had two different types of problems. On one of them, the update to 8.1 did not appear in the "Store" at all. In the other, it appeared in the "Store" and proceeded to perform the update, but hung permanently at about 41% completion of the installation.

Both problems were solved by calling Microsoft Support, although one of the problems had to be bumped up a level. But the Microsoft technicians were prompt, courteous and knowledgeable, and in one case spent quite a bit of time on the problem before solving it. In one instance, the problem was solved by downloading a .iso file of the distribution itself. I LIKED that solution!

I thought I was having problems with the most recent major update -- the one that boots desktop computers directly to the desktop by default. It seemed to hang at 52% completion, but I just let it keep running -- for almost an HOUR on my own VERY fast primary computer without seeming to do anything -- and it got by it.

Understand that installation and upgrade issues are a FREE call to Microsoft Support. I strongly suggest taking advantage of this free service. It really, really works.

And look. I'm a guy, too, and one who is particularly reluctant to debase myself by asking for directions, but I am also old enough not to cut off my nose just to spite my foolish pride. Call them.

If you haven't solved the problem. I posted a thing I came across about that problem and posted it a few minutes ago. I'm a little late as I have been having medical issues.