Windows 8.1 Update 1 Failing to Install with errors 80070020, 80073712 and 0x800f081f

Hi Susan,

I agree on the fact that, generally speaking, system corruption is occurring.

The question now is: why? I think this might depends on Microsoft bad written or faulty code in some instances, on third-party software in some other instances, even of hardware issues somtimes, and also due to users' mistakes in some other occasions.

But on the case of this Windows 8.1 Update, I am convinced that the reason of system corruption depends on Microsoft.

My systems were totally fine before attempting this update.

The reason of these hundreds of thread pages is not that our systems were corrupted, but it's because Microsoft realeased a very badly developed major update.

Exactly.

Once upon a time I went to a security conference and learned that antivirus vendors (yes trusted/major vendors) had been continuing to use certain networking api's in their software when they had been told that these api's were no longer supported and were being phased out.  They preferred the way they used to do it because it gave them more information over the firewall and networking ports.  But, as a result we saw some nasty performance issues when this antivirus was installed on servers.  Before this I kept saying the issue was Microsoft's.  When I realized that the vendors also had a fault, it was a learning experience.   There's fault on both sides. 

The Microsoft ecosystem is - in my personal opinion - messy.  Even the trusted vendors do not code as well as they should.  As you say, the end users suffer as a result.

Thank you Susan,

But this brings up another problem.

I only install Microsoft software and major/trusted software vendors programs.

I do not "play" with my PCs. The only hardware I connect via USB are printers and external drives (again, only major/trusted manufacturers).

It appears to me that as of lately Microsft hasn't be capable to manage any longer the extremely wide software and hardware ecosystem it has been creating!

And this is a total contradiction.

Also, my feeling is that Windows Update is creating corruption in our systems at some point, and that the current MS OSs are no longer capable to fix those issues via embedded OS maintenance.

My idea is that the reason of all that is that current Microsoft coders are not as good as they were in the past, and of course because nobody knows how to handle properly the mammuth coding cores which come from older Windows versions.

Again, all the above is putting unnecessary and unwanted burden on us, the end users, and creating major pain and failure.

This is sooo true Marco!  Microsoft is truly not the same company they were when they developed XP and Windows 7(notice I am ignoring Vista.)  I also believe that this update is corrupting our systems.  This is clear from some of the issues being experienced by the users who have "successfully" installed this disaster of an update.  One of them is internet issues and now, after yesterday's failed install, I am having browsing issues that both my husband and son are not experiencing...so it is not the ISP.  My husband is using Kubuntu and my son is using Windows 7.   Now I will have to troubleshoot yet another issue.  One of the ways one of the customers had to install this update in the first place was to disable their internet adapter or something like that...and one of the issues after they were able to install was no internet connection(different user I believe.)  Some users disable IE11 to complete the install and then cannot use IE11.  

  In response to the "playing with software" statement I have had my own personal computers for 11 years and have ALWAYS used third party software and tweaked my systems with NO ISSUES whatsoever...so this has NOTHING to do with the end user and everything to do with MS.