@Scott
Your Odyssey almost made me cry, honest. These are the things that make us all, enthusiasts soldiers of the quest of the unknown. I'm sooooo glad you finally succeeded with your puzzle, a fine courtesy of MS. In my case I'm encountering always error 0x30018 while finishing the 8.1 installation with the ISO disc.... and another gift from MS named 0x8024200D when trying the update from their store. I tried myriad of attempts with same number of "combination" workarounds to no avail.... Now I got enough with this theme, no more. MICROSOFT, open your eyes to see what you have done and come up with a FIX right now!