"Couldn't update to Windows 8.1 - 0xC1900101 - 0x40017"

This is ridiculous and very poor service from Microsoft.

I've tried to upgrade from 8 unsuccessfully ten times and now my 8 installation is going unstable after months and months of no problems. I get random hangs in the boot sequence.

Frankly from the reports on this thread I'm not convinced that I'd be any better off if I did get 8.1 installed either.

To those who got personal support from Microsoft, did you have to pay extra for that or did you find a way to get free personal support ?

Hi Rajesh,

Some of the issues described here are not resolvable by what you're suggesting. Here is what is happening to me (BTW, I used to work for Microsoft, so I know the process and I am a very senior software engineer).

I am running a 4.3 Ghz AMD Phenom 6 core with a Kingston 128 Gb SSD in RAID 0, plus 1.5 Tb RAID 0 backplane with 16 Gb of memory. I Built this box out, so I know it works. I loaded Windows 8 this past March and everything for the most part ran just fine. The only exceptions were a handful of third party apps that had memory leaks or threw exceptions.

A couple of days ago, I got my free update for Windows 8.1. The install was abysmal and took almost all day (a really bad thing IMO). It failed twice to fully download (my connection speed is very fast - 40 mps down, 21 mps up). Upon analysis of that, the connection was reset by Mircosoft; again a very bad thing IMO.

Since installing Windows 8.1, the following core components have stopped working and/or are corrupt;

1. Windows Defender will not run or enable for anti virus or spyware
2. Windows Update Service partially works in that it will download the updates, but will not install any of them. Meaning Windows Updates for the OS, Office 2013, 3rd Party install notifications, et al.
3. Constant memory 100% utilization issues/locking up, etc. (oddly, CPU utilization rarely reaches 34% - The memory issues appear to be flooding leaks, something I haven't seen in a very long time and that was always with applications written in C++ with bad memory allocation code)
4. Windows Resource Protection cannot repair the corrupt files from the install of Windows 8.1 Upgrade
5. The repair of Windows Update Service was not fixed in the repair as the service itself was installed incorrectly and attempt to use bad DLL's (did anyone actually check the cab files to verify? How did this get past the FSR?)

You guys have a huge problem here with this product and it went out the door and RTM'd to the public in a very unstable state. This is unacceptable. Right now I have a desktop that is only useful about 40% of the time and I have to hard boot 5 to 10 times a day.

Regards,

Michael Hyde

Software Development Manager

(redacted), Inc.

Denver, CO

*** Email address is removed for privacy ***

720-443-9326

This is the first post that actually makes sense.

The huge variety of "fixes" suggest a huge variety of bugs.  There is not "one solution" to fit all.  For some it is software, for others firmware.  The "winners" simply are "lucky" to have a system which confounds 8.1 in one particular way only.  The losers are everyone else, many people from the forum entries.

I get the impression that 8.1 was rushed and not ready.  This would explain the tardiness in repair or response from MS.  Perhaps they were driven by commercial concerns, i.e. the contemporaneous release of Mavericks.  Either way, 8.1 is a huge mistake both practically and reputationally.  Apple did something like with the Maps, and it's about time we got an apology from MS.  I and a lot of others have wasted a huge amount of time on this, time which cannot be replaced.

The buggy outcome was predicted by developers when MS changed its interaction model and this post shows it has come to pass.  BTW, I am not a jaded developer, rather a now-jaded customer.  The longer it takes for MS to respond in a meaningful way, the more this judgement appears to be vindicated.

I had the blue screen as well.

For me it was the total size of my user files folders. As a copy is made of all your user files the installation will crash if the HDD isn't large enough to hold these twice.

It worked for me by backing up my user directories to another drive and then empty the content of the folders untill user directory wasn't 80GB any more but just 10GB.

Worked like a charm when I had done that. After install just copy the files back and you're upgraded.

Hope this helps...

Thanks for the suggestion, many of us are willing to try anything to make this work.  While your suggestion seemed counterintuitive inasmuch as I have user files totaling 160gb and there is not enough time during the process to duplicate all these files, but I tried anyway.  I moved all 160gb to a backup drive and removed the drive from the system.  This left me with 240gb free on a 500gb SSD system drive.  The time to perform all of the steps of a failed upgrade remained the same as did the eventual error code of the failed upgrade.

Hi Rajesh,

Some of the issues described here are not resolvable by what you're suggesting. Here is what is happening to me (BTW, I used to work for Microsoft, so I know the process and I am a very senior software engineer).

I am running a 4.3 Ghz AMD Phenom 6 core with a Kingston 128 Gb SSD in RAID 0, plus 1.5 Tb RAID 0 backplane with 16 Gb of memory. I Built this box out, so I know it works. I loaded Windows 8 this past March and everything for the most part ran just fine. The only exceptions were a handful of third party apps that had memory leaks or threw exceptions.

A couple of days ago, I got my free update for Windows 8.1. The install was abysmal and took almost all day (a really bad thing IMO). It failed twice to fully download (my connection speed is very fast - 40 mps down, 21 mps up). Upon analysis of that, the connection was reset by Mircosoft; again a very bad thing IMO.

Since installing Windows 8.1, the following core components have stopped working and/or are corrupt;

1. Windows Defender will not run or enable for anti virus or spyware
2. Windows Update Service partially works in that it will download the updates, but will not install any of them. Meaning Windows Updates for the OS, Office 2013, 3rd Party install notifications, et al.
3. Constant memory 100% utilization issues/locking up, etc. (oddly, CPU utilization rarely reaches 34% - The memory issues appear to be flooding leaks, something I haven't seen in a very long time and that was always with applications written in C++ with bad memory allocation code)
4. Windows Resource Protection cannot repair the corrupt files from the install of Windows 8.1 Upgrade
5. The repair of Windows Update Service was not fixed in the repair as the service itself was installed incorrectly and attempt to use bad DLL's (did anyone actually check the cab files to verify? How did this get past the FSR?)

You guys have a huge problem here with this product and it went out the door and RTM'd to the public in a very unstable state. This is unacceptable. Right now I have a desktop that is only useful about 40% of the time and I have to hard boot 5 to 10 times a day.

Regards,

Michael Hyde

Software Development Manager

(redacted), Inc.

Denver, CO

******@live.com

720-443-9326

That may account for some percentage of the reported problems, but I find it interesting that most of the posts relate to upgrades from 8.0. Were there anywhere near as many posts when they did the upgrade from Windows 7 to 8? I was able to upgrade my home built PC from 8 to 8.1 with zero problems. However my experience in attempting the same upgrade on my Sony Vaio VGN-FW490 laptop PC was quite different. After repeated attempts, I finally called Microsoft and eventually had a level 2 tech work on the laptop for about 2 hours. No success. He emailed me with some comments about my contacting him when I received a cd (something he never mentioned when on the phone). I emailed back a week later. No reply. Two weeks later still no reply.  I finally called, and another tech had no idea wheat the "CD" comment meant in the email.

BTW my desktop PC is much more heavily used than my Vaio. I have an SSD, used imaging software several times when I switched drives. All went well. Microsoft needs to take this kind of stuff into consideration when providing upgrades. I have been a loyal user since DOS, and have NEVER run into this type of stuff when doing a"point" upgrade. I am very disappointed.