Windows 8.1 update fails (Aug 14)

[CA19100]

I have a strange issue, and I'm hoping someone might be able to steer me in the right direction.

Windows 8.1 on a homebuilt i5-3570 machine. Nothing exotic; a 6870 video card, one hard drive, and a small SSD running Intel SRT. It's been running flawlessly for a while. I went to install this month's optional Update for Windows 8.1 x64 (KB2975719), and it made my system unbootable.

On reboot from the update, I get the startup logo with "Preparing Automatic Repair," and shortly thereafter I'm offered the option of booting into Windows (which doesn't work and comes right back to this prompt), shutting it down, or going into advanced options.

If I revert to the Restore Point just before the update, everything works as it always has.

Before I go through the tedium of a Windows reinstall, is there anything I can check that might help me attempt to diagnose the issue? Sorry if it's a little vague, but I'm not getting any error message other than "Preparing Automatic Repair."

Thanks!

 

[RampantAndroid]

If you want to for now, hide the update.

 

[Kenmitch]

It was an optional update so I didn't install it yet.

As a public service I went ahead and installed the update just to see what would happen on my rig.

Living on the edge I went ahead and installed it at my current 4.4ghz overclock.

Installed and booted into Windows without a hitch.

Maybe you could try method 2 for the update and see if it'll take?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2975719

 

[CA19100]

Maybe you could try method 2 for the update and see if it'll take?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2975719

I didn't even realize that was an option! Still somewhat new to the inner workings of Windows, so appreciate the info.

Unfortunately, this method seemed to have the same result as the Windows Update method. The initial installation works fine, but after reboot, that seems to be where the trouble is.

I watched it carefully this time, and noticed something odd: It gets to 30% on the update, then the little progress wheel (tumbling dots? not sure what that's called) moved to the far left side of the screen for about five seconds, then the machine rebooted. That's when it booted to the "Preparing Automatic Repair" screen, followed shortly by needing to go back to a system restore point to get it to boot.

My gut tells me something is corrupted and a reinstall would probably be wise, but any other ideas are welcome!

Thanks.

 

[corkyg]

My Win 8.1 machine indicated 20 files in the last update. Two of the failed. After finishing the reboot, etc., the good 18 ones were OK. I went back to the update site and it then installed the two that failed. No problems this time.

 

[PliotronX]

For future reference and in case the updates keep failing even after rebooting, I have about a 70% success rate with running the commands:

net stop bits
net stop wuauserv

Then delete the SoftwareDistribution folder in Windows and restart those services:

net start wuauserv
net start bits

And try updates again. This has an inverse success rate with updates through the app store IME. I have run these commands and cleared that folder so many times on so many systems I can do it in my sleep.

 

[CA19100]

For future reference and in case the updates keep failing even after rebooting, I have about a 70% success rate with...

Thanks very much for the suggestion. I was hoping there was some way to clear out the update cache, and it seems like that's what this would do.

Unfortunately, it's still hung up at the 30% point after the initial reboot, although it did say it was doing number (x) of 5 as it went along, which it didn't do before, so I was hoping!

I'll definitely file it in the bag of tricks for later though. Thanks!

 

[RampantAndroid]

Don't kill the whole folder - first try just killing the downloads folder inside of software dist 🙂

 

[PliotronX]

Don't kill the whole folder - first try just killing the downloads folder inside of software dist 🙂

Good idea, for expedience I don't spend time testing it and just clear the whole enchilada.

Since it's stuck, I would try an sfc /scannow. I've only had a handful of cases fixed by this but it's worth a shot. Never hurts to run chkdsk either although since chkdsk looks for logical corruption and to get an overall picture of the health of the HDD, run the portable ZIP version (the installers have the confusing checkboxes that install toolbars and crap) of CrystalDiskInfo. At a glance it will tell you the grade of the drive's health and if it says caution, look for the reallocated sectors and pending sectors counts. If these are in the double digits, I'd look at backing up and replacing the drive.

If all else fails, I would just right-click on KB2975719 and "hide update" :biggrin: