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

Fully agree with Gunzta, it is time for Micromoney to come clean and admit that they have messed up big-time. If it was only RT then we would not have so many folks on various forums having the same problems with 8.1 Pro. This forum alone has around 300 folks with upgrade failures.

For the record the Microsoft figure of 1 in 1000 RT owners with upgrade errors is not a "small minority", if they have sold say 1 million surface tablets you do the arithmetic, that amounts to a very significant number indeed! Another point which Micromoney has made that the problem exists with mainly "self build"  machines is a blatant lie. We cannot build Surface tablets and install RT ourselves, they are factory made and preinstalled. So who is lying here? It sure isn't us.

What can we do to get the high and mighty at Redmond to listen to us? Does anyone have any suggestions or do we just knuckle under and wait for their programmers to tell us yet again it is basically our fault for not having the wit to have our machines ready to troubleshoot the unknown error written into 8.1 and it's download.

Sort it out yourselves is what it sounds like and I for one don't like the way we are being treated, we have paid for this system and under consumer laws in various countries a product supplied has to be fit for purpose and function to an acceptable standard. OK so the upgrade is "free" but the original operating system is not and failing to install this upgrade means it is not functioning to an acceptable standard!

Apologies for the rant but I am p***ed off after numerous attempts and "fixes" to get this thing to work as it should.

This post probably won't be terribly helpful, but I thought I'd share just in case (since I've been wrestling with this issue since the 8.1 release).

After a long time, I was able to get the update installed (it's running great now as I type).

I have a custom built machine with an NVidia graphics card. I was getting the 0x40017 error message and rollback.

As a last ditch effort, I went through my ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS and uninstalled anything that was unnecessary and was driver/system related.  I didn't have time to try one item at a time to see what was the culprit, so I just did everything at once.  The list of things removed included:

Kaseya

AVG Anti-virus

Intel's Drive Controller and Rapid Storage Software

Anything NVidia

Anything Creative Labs

Behringer UCA202 USB Audio device (which I had unplugged for the update)

Printer Drivers (we have Kyocera printers in the office)

Once I had done that (and not restarting when prompted, unless totally necessary), I went into DEVICE MANAGER and uninstalled (plus deleting drivers) of all video and audio related components.

Then, without restarting, I applied the update and it worked (having failed 5 time previously without doing all this).

Like I said, not a lot of specific information.  I guess my only suggestion is to keep uninstalling. The culprit, I'm sure, is in there.

Best of luck!

+1 from me, another custom gaming PC user getting the same error.

8.1 seems to install ok for me but it doesn't make it through the setup process, I get the EULA, I click agree, I get the recommended settings screen, I go with the default recommended settings, the next screen is the "Next, we'll set up your account..." and that's where it stays. It never progresses past this point. I hit power off, power on, and it restores my previous version of Windows..... and repeat ad-infinitum.

Much like everyone else, I've tried just about everything to get it to work. I've tried about 20 times and I'm starting to loose the will to live. C'mon Microsoft, everyone makes mistakes, but at least acknowledge that you hear us and that you have some clever people working very hard to resolve this for us. Especially since you've now resolved the 8.1 RT problem, you should have some spare Windows Engineering Team people you can throw at this. That is all we ask.

Intel integrated video doesn't necessarily work, either. It certainly doesn't help with my Sony Vaio.

While I agree with the others that it's disappointing to see things rehashed, this response does give me one more (well, actually two more) ideas:

1.  I never thought to install an 8.1 driver on an 8.0 machine.  If that's what you're saying, perhaps I'll try that.
2.  The consistent pointing at NVidia made me think that perhaps what the previous poster had said is what needs to be tried:  Removing the card and updating with built in graphics.  Unfortunately my board is an nforce board which *likely* means that the built in graphics are NVidia, leaving me with no alternative to update my machine.

Forgetting every manufacturer except Intel integrated was quite the oversight for MS, don't you think?

I had to UNINSTALL both of my graphics cards and remove the drivers, then do the upgrade, and then install the updated drivers for both.

It DID NOT work for me with the latest drivers installed prior to trying the upgrade.

I'm using an ATI card, and after uninstalling the drivers the install still bombs for me.