Windows 8.1 installation error 0x80004005

Congrats to all who have overcome this problem. I'd really appreciate advice, esp from Microsoft, on what to do about my version of the problem, which I know others have (or have had) too. In summary, I'm upgrading from W8 to W8.1 via the Store, everything goes ok till after the 1st restart and then apparently setting up (of W8.1) is ok till it reaches 68 percent, then the computer restarts and begins 'restoring your prev version of windows'. When W8 is restored it explains it couldn't complete the upgrade, with error 0x800040005 0x20004. There is also a reported disk fault (according to Action Center), which has to get scanned and repaired: the drive has a long string of characters including fecd7546-d106-11e1-96fa-8086.... The PC previously had W7, was upgraded to W8 and in the last few days I've reinstalled W8 from the installation DVD (keeping my settings and programs etc) and carried out all updates before attempting the latest upgrade to W8.1. I don't have expertise to try out many of the ideas in this string: surely this is a generic fault for which a solution is being prepared (or acknowledged by Microsoft as being needed). Somebody please advise what I should do. I'd really appreciate it.

Best wishes

John

I have a laptop with a single hard drive.  What worked for me was a reinstall after completely wiping the old installation.  The problem I had, for whatever reason, was in the master boot record which somehow got messed up when I dual booted with Ubuntu.  By doing a complete reinstall (without retaining settings and programs) the MBR was rebuilt in the expected place and the upgrade to 8.1 went without problem.  I don't know if this will work for you but it may be worth a try. 

Sadly Microsoft seem unable to respond to this in a timely fashion.

Paul

"Timely" ?  That would have been that the upgrade worked 1st time on the 17th last month!

Most of us either:

1.    Gave up and are back on 8.0 or even on 7,

2.     Mucked around and by chance got it to work by a unique means ("Luck"?) that does not work elsewhere!

3. Clobbered our whole sweetly running system and re-installed 8.0, hacked the key, installed to 8.1 and changed the key to our original legit key.

and now rebuilding our s/w installation, fight with UAC that can either work one way or another but not all the ways.....

Should be done by Xmas!

Thanks MS, Wasted a few months of actual productive work time on this system!

Learnt a lot! (Don't ask what, but learnt a lot!)

Thank you both. Think I'll stick to Windows 8 until Microsoft fixes the problem: which could be sometime / never? As the Store-based offering doesn't work for me, I'd be quite happy to fork out for a LOW COST traditional-style upgrade.  I'd certainly not countenance the current expensive Windows 8.1 offering, which seems to be the only option available to non-technical people (and who knows if it would work anyway?): some option!  

Hm, just been through an OSX Mavericks update which went without hitch. Interesting comparison.

Best wishes

John

Finally the update was a breeze the last week...

FWIW, these "workarounds" didn't work for me:

1. Updating to 8.1 via Store.
2. Updating through 8.1 ISO disc.
3. Making active the boot partition (created by an old W7 installation and used by W8, I think).
4. Disabling every single 3rd party services and apps, even uninstalling all of them altogether.
5. Cleaning faulty registry entries.
6. Deleting the small System partition and making a single partition that holds everything (system, boot, dumps, etc).
7. Clean boot.
8. etc, etc, etc

None of the above things worked (because I tried hard to keep all my applications untouched while updating)

The following "workaround" was the trick to update:

-Refreshing Windows 8 from its ISO disc (and consequently losing all my programs and apps) prior to update to 8.1 through the Store.

As someone said out there, it seems that 8.1 needs to see a perfectly clean 8.0 boot files which appears always gets messed after "months of use" (no matter how careful you are with maintenance). And that's why my friends that got their systems just updated to 8.0, no one of them got errors while updating...

Hope it helps :)