Windows 8.1 installation error 0x80070004

Anonymous
2013-10-17T12:56:28+00:00

I got the following message while updating Windows 8 to 8.1 from the Store (translated from hungarian):

An error had occured and the installation of Windows 8.1 was unsuccessful. Try again. Error code: 0x80070004

The event log shows the following:

"Telepítési hiba: A Windows 0x80070004 hiba miatt nem tudta telepíteni a következő frissítést: Hungarian ESD Bundle Parent."

In english: Installation error: Windows could not isntall the following update: Hungarian ESD Bundle Parent, with error 0x80070004.

What should I do?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Install and upgrade

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2013-12-10T01:08:25+00:00

Hi,

If you receive error 0x80070004 when you install Windows 8.1, please first check the following:

1.      This error may occur if you are using symbolic links (via the mklink command) to redirect your user profile to another drive.  If so, you can resolve this by restoring your user profile to the system drive by following the steps in KB 2876597.

2.      This error may also occur if you have a corrupt user profile.  To check for this:

·         Open the System Properties (Type “System” at the Start screen, and then select “System”.)

·         Select Advanced system settings.

·         In the Advanced tab, under User Profiles, select Settings.

·         Try to log into any profiles you see listed here.  If you’re unable to log in, that profile may be corrupt.  Return to the User Profiles in Advanced system settings and delete the corrupt profile.  If you see any profiles listed as “Unknown” or that otherwise look corrupt, delete those profiles as well.

·         Try creating a new administrator profile and try installing Windows 8.1 from the new profile.  You can find steps for creating a new profile and copying the old profile to the new one at Fix a corrupted user profile.  (This was written for Vista, but the steps are similar.  You can find Folder Options for displaying hidden system files in the Control Panel, under Appearance and Personalization.)

If you’ve confirmed that you’ve tried all of these steps and you’re still receiving error 0x80070004 when installing Windows 8.1, we would like to collect more information to try to identify additional causes.  Please run this automated utility, which will collect log files and send them to Microsoft.  (You can also choose to save the information to your desktop.)  If you get a message that says the utility has already expired, that means we have already collected enough sample files. 

This log analysis may take some time.  We will post a fix or solution as soon as additional sources for this error are confirmed.  We appreciate your help in collecting this information.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-10-18T21:00:48+00:00

    I also had this issue and linked by Users directory from my SSD to an HDD but was able to successfully install Windows 8.1 using the following process:

    1. Relocate the contents of My Music and My Videos to a temporary folder on my HDD.  In my case, I used D:\Temp\Music and D:\Temp\Videos.  I didn't delete the directoriesThese files made up 60 GB of the 62 GB of data in my Users directory.  While my SSD does not have 62 GB of free space, it definitely has more than 2 GB.
    2. Restarted and booted from a recovery USB drive.  A Windows install CD or Windows recovery CD would work just as well too.
    3. Booted into command prompt.
    4. Since I had booted from a recovery drive, my drives were remapped slightly.  My normal C drive was now the G drive.  My D drive remained the same.
    5. Deleted the symbolic link from G:\Users to D:\Users using <rmdir G:\Users>.
    6. Copied the contents (now greatly reduced) of D:\User to G:\Users using the command <robocopy /copyall /mir /xj D:\Users G:\Users>.
    7. Restarted into Windows
    8. Installed Windows 8.1
    9. Booted from the recovery USB drive into command prompt.
    10. Copied the contents of G:\Users to D:\Users using <robocopy /copyall /mir /xj G:\Users D:\Users>
    11. Deleted the directory G:\Users using <rmdir /s /q G:\Users>.  If you have trouble with this, make an empty, temporary directory, like G:\Temp using <mkdir G:\Temp>, then use the command <robocopy /mir G:\Temp G:\Users>.  This will delete the entire contents of G:\Users and should allow you to use the rmdir command without issue to remove both the Users and Temp directory.
    12. Recreate the symbolic link using <mklink /j G:\Users D:\Users>
    13. Restarted into Windows
    14. Moved the contents of my temporary music and video directories back to their normal locations.

    I hope this helps someone.  Between difficulty installing a Windows Defender update last week and Windows 8.1 this week, I've become pretty adept at handling issues arriving with the symlink being in place for C:\Users.

    Good luck.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-10-18T18:48:50+00:00

    I used the advanced boot options to enter into the command line mode,

    and then

    1. delete the symbolic link (rmdir c:\users)
    2. create an empty directory (mkdir c:\Users)
    3. copy back the Users directory from another partition (robocopy /copyall /mir /xj /r:10 /w:10 d:\users c:\users)

    and then, continued to install the windows 8.1 from app-store. Finally it worked.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-10-18T18:40:32+00:00

    Unfortunately, this is not a solution for people (like me) who set the symlink on Users !

    But it seems to confirm the symlink problem.

    Yes, i believe it won't.

    To me it worked because i only made symlink on the respective user folder and not the Users folder in general...

    Yep, I am struggling with removing the symlink as well.   I am thinking about deleting the link, booting to linux, moving my d:\Users directory to c:\Users.    Do you think that will work?

    Try to move the folder the way you moved initially before you created the symlink.

    I used Robocopy with a lot of parameters in DOS mode.

    I believe the issues are not related with the common folders like documents and so on, but with the APPDATA and several other symlinks that exists in the USERS folder(s)

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-10-18T17:49:46+00:00

    Unfortunately, this is not a solution for people (like me) who set the symlink on Users !

    But it seems to confirm the symlink problem.

    Yes, i believe it won't.

    To me it worked because i only made symlink on the respective user folder and not the Users folder in general...

    Yep, I am struggling with removing the symlink as well.   I am thinking about deleting the link, booting to linux, moving my d:\Users directory to c:\Users.    Do you think that will work?

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