Microsoft may have rolled out the Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 update on October 17th, but the devices and services giant has faced some consumer frustration over update issues. First, Microsoft had to pull the Windows RT 8.1 update for a few days due to an issue, then Windows 8.1 users were facing a mouse lag issue while gaming, and now it appears that there are some consumers who can’t even install Windows 8.1.
“I have downloaded the Windows 8.1 update from the store but cannot get it to install. Each time I try, I get to the point where it is “getting my devices ready”, then the PC restarts to a blue screen with error message. It then tries to recover the installation, fails, then restores Windows 8,” one user stated in an official Microsoft support forum. He is not alone, as there are many others on that support forum expressing their frustrations. In fact, there are over 400 comments on that page.
“Couldn’t update to Windows 8.1 – 0xC1900101 – 0x40017”
Some users who attempt to update to Windows 8.1 are greeted with a blue screen of death and an error that says: “Couldn’t update to Windows 8.1. Sorry, we couldn’t complete the update to Windows 8.1. We’ve restored your previous version of Windows to this PC. 0xC1900101 – 0x40017.”
Apparently this issue boils down to a driver update issue. It seems that there is a bug in the driver update portion of the installer and Microsoft has yet to roll out a fix. However, the devices and services giant has offered a few suggestions:
- First, please double-check the error code. There are many variations of error 0xC1900101, each with a different location code — the error extension, located after the dash. The information in this thread is intended only for location code 0x40017. If you are receiving a different location code, these steps are unlikely to resolve your issue.
- Check that you’ve already updated all of your drivers. In particular, if you have an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, make sure you’ve installed the latest NVIDIA drivers.
- Check that you do not have any SteelSeries products that support the SteelSeries Engine installed on your PC. The SteelSeries Engine software is currently not supported on Windows 8.1. Please uninstall the software before attempting to update to Windows 8.1
“If you’ve tried all of these steps and are still receiving the 0x40017 error, we are still investigating the issue to determine what additional drivers are causing this error. We’d like to thank everyone who sent us their log files to help us in this effort. We have collected enough sample files to work with, and are busy analyzing the logs at this time. We’ll post a fix or solution as soon as they are confirmed,” Microsoft stated.
This issue is unrelated to the issue Microsoft faced with the Windows RT 8.1 update, where consumers could not boot up their Surface RT after applying the update.
If you are still facing this issue, follow Microsoft’s suggestions listed above and unplug all accessories (except for keyboard and mouse) before you attempt to update to Windows 8.1. Also make sure you have all the latest device drivers installed on Windows 8 prior to doing the update. You can also update any device drivers from the manufacturers website. We will keep you posted once Microsoft reveals a fix.
Have you faced this issue? Let us know in the comments below.
