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

The Administrative (bits) profile is corrupt ; You must reinstall Windows 8 first, then continue on to Windows 8.1.

Since you used to work for Microsoft and "know the process" how come there is nothing in the "act" or "err" logs to pinpoint the problem encountered???

BTW my $windows.~BT subdirectory, in which the Panther install logs are found is 4.5 gig in size!!

bob

I've been trying for 2 weeks to update from Windows 8 to 8.1.  I have literally tried everything, and nothing seems to work.  I'm on my 12th attempt right now.

I have uninstalled practically half of my software and nothing helps.  Clean driver installs.  Even the Upgrade Assistant now tells me everything is good to go.  Regardless, it fails.   I can make it all the way to the Windows start up screen and that is where the spinning wheel of dots rotates infinitely.  I even left it like that for 12 hours and nothing.  When I restart I get the error that I have to restore back to 8.0 and get the error code on this thread.

This is beyond frustrating.  Microsoft has really fallen a long way in terms of quality. The fact that they allow this rubbish to exist and make it this difficult for users to upgrade an OS is downright absurd.  A regular user shouldn't have to go through great lengths to clean registries, unload drivers, pull cards out, change bios settings, etc.  Imagine all of the people without extensive computer knowledge out there who have no idea how to fix this atrocity?

My computer is a few years old.  Here is what I am working with:

Dell 730X

Windows 8 Pro 64 Bit

Intel i7-940 2.93Ghz

6GB RAM

EVGA GeForce GTX 570HD

Blu-Ray Burner

DVD ROM

Microsoft Wireless Keyboard and Mouse 5000 Series

Dell 2408 WFP Monitor

Broadcom Netlink Ethernet Adapter

Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi

HP Photosmart C6300 printer

Any help by the community would be appreciated.  I won't hold my breath waiting for Microsoft themselves to fix this.  At this point with this many bugs maybe I shouldn't even want to get 8.1 on my machine.

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.