Resetting Surface RT in NOV 2016. Cannot get Windows RT 8.1 Update 3. [Solved]

SCHTASKS /QUERY /V | clip

Thanks, that worked.

So, what did you see when you Paste the results into an open Notepad window?

Wrong - pathext=exe was already in there, as I said before.

In fact, if you read carefully you will note that I was writing conditionally.  Also, I don't know if it matters but my path extensions have a period in front of them.   In any case, as long as you were able to run the above pipeline the way it is written, the point is moot.

search for wnf finds nothing. - hence the blank cleanup.txt

You aren't using cleanup.txt any more.  You should be pasting the output saved by clip into something where it can be read and searched.  If there is no wnf to find it would mean either that the patch documentation was wrong or that the patch had not been run at all, thus explaining why you keep seeing it--nothing would be done to do the clean up which had been determined was necessary.

HTH

Robert

SCHTASKS /QUERY /V | clip

Thanks, that worked.

So, what did you see when you Paste the results into an open Notepad window?

I got pages and pages of stuff, but no wnf (wnfcleanup)

Wrong - pathext=exe was already in there, as I said before.

Yes, we both know that it is PATHEXT=.exe (with about 8 other extensions listed - with periods - duh)

In fact, if you read carefully you will note that I was writing conditionally.  Also, I don't know if it matters but my path extensions have a period in front of them.   In any case, as long as you were able to run the above pipeline the way it is written, the point is moot.

search for wnf finds nothing. - hence the blank cleanup.txt

Let me clarify:

pasting clip into notepad and searching for wnf finds nothing.

- hence the blank cleanup.txt when using the previous method.

You aren't using cleanup.txt any more.  You should be pasting the output saved by clip into something where it can be read and searched.  If there is no wnf to find it would mean either that the patch documentation was wrong or that the patch had not been run at all, thus explaining why you keep seeing it--nothing would be done to do the clean up which had been determined was necessary.

So we are down to either the patch documentation is wrong,

or it is not running correctly, even tho it has told me it ran correctly every one of the 50 or so times... (sigh)

I tried to post the output of clip, but the forum gave an error message along the lines of:

you can only post 60000 characters, you are at 700000 characters (10 times to large)

HTH

Robert

I'm really starting to wonder if I'm going to need to factory reset AGAIN, and hope i get lucky this time.

I'm a stubborn type and i prefer to learn how to fix it rather than give up and hit it with the reformat sledgehammer.

I'm also hoping that by figuring it out and documenting it here, that maybe the next person can benefit from our research.

Is there any other way of getting more info on if the patch is even doing anything?

Look for the presence and version of certain files?

Is there any other way of getting more info on if the patch is even doing anything?

If you can find remnants of it being downloaded and expanded, that would prove it had done something.  I was hoping that you would be able to find the program itself and be able to use it manually.  Otherwise, do we know what is triggering the patch?  E.g. the documentation mentions two possible causes.  Do you see any sign of those?  WindowsUpdate.log might have some clues.  There is also a separate event log for WindowsUpdateClient and various other potential diagnostics including netsh trace.  Another possibility I suspect would be auditing but I have never done one of those. 

It's unfortunate that we don't have a tool like ProcMon to help throw some more light on these sketchy symptoms.  Oh.  I just realized.  It would be possible to both run ProcMon and the update on demand in a Surface Pro; then we could get a better idea of how the ARM version would probably work.  I may do that since performance on my Surface 2 Pro with W10 14393.693 is not wonderful and I am close to doing a rebuild on it anyway.  Even better I think would be to do it with a real W8.1 and I suppose I would be able to do that with a VM.

Otherwise, is this your only problem symptom?  I am still puzzled that you appear to have seen no sign of KB3000850 or a later "rollup" to take on the role of "Most recent cumulative update".  I have been assuming that that could be a cue about the completeness of a W8.1 update state.  FWIW there is no such thing in the W10 WU UI and unfortunately there is also no WindowsUpdate.log where I have shown that the same detail can be discovered in an RT.   So, in case newer rollups for the RT suppress that display in the View your update history (fullscreen settings page), please just search for "Current cumulative update level calculated:" in WindowsUpdate.log and see if you have anything there that is better than KB2919355.

HTH

Robert