Windows 8.1 will not download from the Store

Was having the same exact issue regarding "needing admin privileges while having an admin account, followed these steps and it corrected my issue.

Thank you!

Just bought a Dell Inspiron 14" 7437 at Best Buy early this week. Same problem with everyone else having issues updating to Windows 8.1. I did all the updates for Windows 8.0 and all the necessary Drivers updates from Dell prior to trying to update Windows 8.0 to 8.1 and still getting the same message saying that I needed to be an administrator! Very frustrating. So last night I give it a last chance of calling DELL support before I decided to return it to Best Buy! On the phone with Dell support tech for 2 hours. He did not seems to figure it out. He finally called Microsoft support line. She remotely controlled my computer. I watched what she did and was able to successfully ultimately install Windows 8.1. So here is the steps:

1. Update all the necessary windows updates from Microsoft for Windows 8.0.
2. Then update all the Drivers for free from Dell.com.
3. Then if you log in using a Microsoft account with password. That's fine. You should be the administrator already.
4. Now follow this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSKXCE4BZ4c to add a local user account. You can delete this later if you wish once you have Windows 8.1 installed.
5. Change this local user account as an administrator. Follow this link's direction http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-User-Account-an-Administrator-in-Windows-8
6. Then log in as your new setup local user account.
7. Now go to the app store and try to download Free Windows 8.1 update once again. It should work. It worked for me.

After your update, basically go to Control Panel, under Users and Account, you can delete or edit any accounts as necessary. 

Hope this help without calling Dell support who has NOT a clue and wasted over 2 hours. I only spent 20 minutes with the Microsoft tech on the phone and she figured it out! Call Microsoft support if you have issues.

UNKNOWN?!?!?!?  To you maybe, I have done over 15 upgrades and this happens EVERY time.  Each time I shipped the computer back to manufacturer and had them replace it with Windows 8.1 preinstalled.

As we all know in this thread, logging in as the Administrator user with the administrator permission still did not get the ability to successfully download Win8.1 from the Store.

I ultimately called Dell Care who looked at the Service code of this Dell laptop, recognized the machine was registered to Costco (where I purchased from) and saw Costco as the 'ultimate' administrator.  Dell Care changed the ownership from Costco to my Microsoft account.  Logging out as Administrator and logging in as my Microsoft user account which NOW had ultimate 'administrator' privileges allowed the 8.1 download to start successfully without the familiar message "You need to use an account with Administrator privileges to install Windows 8.1 try logging in with the user account of an administrator of this PC and trying the upgrade again."

Bottom line: the local Administrator account does not have the 'ultimate' administrative privileges.  Your Microsoft id account needs this - and you have to figure out how to connect that 'ultimate' access to your Microsoft user id.  What a PITA.

If you have a Dell laptop, make the call to Dell Care to avoid serious frustration.

Good luck to those without Dell Care.  Perhaps the place of purchase can assign the necessary permissions to your Microsoft user id which was the ultimate solution to this issue.