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

Greetings from an upset person.  Does anyone know if the recently released nVidia R331 driver for 64 bit Windows 8 causes the same install problems for the Win 8.1 upgrade from Win 8 64 bit?

I think I will quietly go and hide from my Macintosh friends.  God, what a mess!

Just removed SteelSeries software and trying to upgrade to 8.1. Will see...

Worked for me, I'm on 8.1 now. So if you dont have a steelseries software, there can be another driver or utility that blocks installation process.

What happens once you've upgraded to 8.1 - is your SteelSeries mouse still working okay?

I've got the Sensei with about 8 buttons, which I've customised (mostly just back/forward/double-click actions), plus it runs on two speeds (fast for me, slow for my kids). 

I don't want to upgrade if my mouse isn't going to work as expected.

Does the SteelSeries Engine just customize and store the profiles? Will it work okay without the Engine installed?

Thanks.

Finally got this issue sorted today courtesy of an excellent MS level two technician.

The culprit...an out of date graphics driver for NVIDIA GeForce GT640M

did they find this in Device Manager?

Finally got this issue sorted today courtesy of an excellent MS level two technician.

The culprit...an out of date graphics driver for NVIDIA GeForce GT640M

Seems this works for NVIDIA people, but lots of us (as noted here) are on ATI/AMD cards with the Windows 8.1 drivers already installed. It still causes the errors. Moreover, just using the plain Microsoft low-resolution drivers (with all traces of ATI removed) will still not be able to complete the installation.

I finally got this accomplished on both my desktop (NVIDIA GeForce 8300 GS) and my laptop (NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS).  And this was after multiple failures.

For the desktop, I disconnected all peripherals (except monitor, mouse and keyboard).  I already knew that I couldn't run any NVIDIA driver update past 306.97 (Oct 2012), or it would freeze and crash the computer and constantly cycle on the BSOD.  So, I tried unplugging the Ethernet cable after the first restart, but the 8.1 installer had already downloaded the updated driver, so I was stuck with a machine that not only wouldn't roll back to Win 8, but that would freeze and have to be hard restarted. 

So, I did what I've learned to do when an updated NVIDIA driver gets downloaded from Win 8:  I work as fast as possible to remove the updated driver before it freezes and crashes.  In the past, I only had to roll back to the previous driver, but after Win 8.1 installed, it removed the driver that actually worked (306.97).  After MANY attempted failures, I was finally able to navigate to the device manager before it froze, removed the problem NVIDIA driver, and then was able to use the computer with the generic video driver, and very quickly download the specific driver I needed (306.97), and it worked. 

Then, I had to disable ALL automatic updates from downloading the more current NVIDIA drivers, because it did this several times, and crashed my computer every time.  I just had to work extremely fast to get to the driver and roll back to previous driver and uninstall the newer one.  It's been working now for several days.

On the laptop, which has never had a problem with NVIDIA drivers, I figured it would be easier.  But I had another problem.  My charging port had an error, which I already knew about, and the install would roll back to Win 8.  So, I removed the hard drive, put it in a laptop I already own and was running Win XP on.

I ran Win 8, and installed 8.1 with no issues.  Put the hard drive back into the original laptop, and only needed to call Microsoft to verify the license number (which only took a few minutes).  Everything is now running fine.  NO regrets.  It only took several days of my life to do this, and the contemplation to throw both computers off my roof.