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What exactly did Event Viewer report ?

Are you using a Samsung machine per chance ?

Which of the logs do you mean in EV. There are some errors but who has them not.

Clear NO.

Thanks for the clear answer. I still have something running, but there is little if no hope that it helps.

I appreciate all your questions, but I went through this since FOUR weeks. To repeat myself: none of the things has worked. The event viewer in this case turned out totally useless. What it told me, was already known to me.

Know the websites, tried their advice w/o success!

The download is not the issue. The installation of the updates is the issue. They fail. Since 4 weeks I am working on the issue without any success. The mentioned commands are the ones I ran several times w/o any result whatsoever. I worked with MS support, they could not fix it. It appears the whole Windows update is massively corrupt, including missing files, I assume. It would be a wonder from Heaven, if there would come a solution. Do not believe in it anymore. I do know that I could completely reinstall W 8 (have the media) with all updates, then get W8.1 upgrade and then all the updates for this, then install all Programs etc. etc. etc.

So, the only thing I want is an answer to my question which should be very short (if there is one): YES or NO. If the answer is NO, then I have to go through a W 8 reinstallation first before the upgrade to W 10.

Thanks for your reply. So, MS leaves us alone again. I do hope they will have an ISO option available. Have to wait and see what will happen. Meanwhile I will study the explanations on the website quoted here.

Thanks for all responses! I will try to answer them all now.

1) System restore. Does not work. I tried several restore points and all came up with he same message. Not successful. Unspecified error occurred during system restore. (0X80071a91). Checked the error but no solution to this one. It appears that this a sort of generic MS error where MS apparently cannot say where the issue is buried. Did not change anything.

2)cmptgy. Good explanation but unfortunately does not help either.

3) I went again into the mysterious Administrator where I do NOT need to enter a password at all (why? I don’t know). Once I am in there everything looks different because all settings are – “God knows what”. Anyway, I went into Computer management>Local Users and groups>Users. Here I find myself, Homegroup Users, Guest, and Administrator. From there under Users on the right column I chose “Add New User…” and then added a user name very similar to the one I have, and a password. No problems. Then switched back to my normal account called User Accounts in Control Panel. What did I see? First of all my normal account with “ADMINISTRATOR” and password protected. The other one can be seen under Manage another account but it useless at this time because it has not profile at all. Now I can start msconfig.exe w/o being asked for the admin. password. It seems I am back as Administrator. Proof can be Task Manager. Calling for new task opens the box where a command can be entered and a little check box to “create this task with admin. privileges. With being in a standard account the little check box is not appearing (correctly).

I do not know or understand what my action described above really did do but apparently it got me back.

Just to mention this. I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 (64) and then to Windows 8.1. Sometimes, I experiment a little, and it could be that some corruption may have occurred but my desktop PC runs well at all times.
HP, with Intel I-5, NVidia Graphic Card, Creative Labs Audio Card (very good), CD/DVD drive, 1 TB HD, Charter Cable 60Mbps as for the most important things. When W10 comes out will try a clean install to have a real clean system.

Ok., Fred did not say but I should not have followed his advice, so it’s my fault. I have followed Fred for more than 15 years, and he is an excellent adviser in PC matters. I hope this clears it.

The situation is as such that I even have difficulties now to uninstall things because the User Account Control now ask for any kind of action for an Administrator password, which I do not have and was never asked to create one when I installed Win8. I have a MS account which was the one with admin. privileges which I – the stupido – changed to a standard account. There is also an Administrator. I say this because it does not appear in Control Panel>User Accounts. When I go to shutdown and choose “Switch User”, there is the screen with Administrator and my account (signed in). I assume that the Administrator in this case is the “hidden Administrator account”. Starting this one is not helpful for several reasons, but the main is that it is not the same as my account.

Anyway, the issue is how to get back to a normal account with Admin. priv. as I had it before. Secondly, how to find this dammed Password. I looked it up in the Internet, and there are a lot of advices but all seem to differ, and appear very complicated. Make one mistake and one is out. Is there a sensible solution except reinstalling Win8/Win8.1
The mentioned article does not help. Tried it.

Thanks, BruceR. Sorry to say, it does not work for charter.net

First of all I would like to thank everyone whom posted to help. I appreciate it.

Now, I took a new approach in using YouTube to get some more information. In fact, I got more information than MS’s website provides. I found that the cloud works “downwards” rather than “upwards”. As I already suggested, adding, changing, renaming, and deleting files has to happen in the OneDrive cloud, and then these updates are synced with the device, one uses, PC, Laptop, Smartphone, Tablet. So, consequently doing these actions for instance on a PC, it will have no effect on OneDrive, unless the affected file is moved to the OneDrive respective folder(s)/subfolder(s). As an example I copied a folder to OneDrive on my PC. With sync it was uploaded, and then I deleted it in the cloud. The folder then was also removed from OneDrive on the PC.

I will certainly research this cloud computing further to find out more.

Hi, I’d like to give an update what I’ve done. First of all, I deleted all folders under OneDrive on my laptop to avoid competing updates. I can go to OneDrive on the net where I find all folders and files anyway and they are updated from the desktop. This achieved the elimination of these duplicates. The sync process is paused on the laptop. So far so good.

Something funny happened in “Help and Support” as opposed to what I wrote in a previous post. This time OneDrive produced 8 results and SkyDrive 0. Maybe there was an update of which I was not aware. However, I worked through it but the help there is pretty light, if not to say partially useless as far as my questions are concerned. These questions remain unanswered. To repeat them:

1) What happens when I add a file in c:usersusernameDocuments (or any other folder like pictures etc.). There is no sync with OneDrive which means, one has to it manually by copying the file to c:usersusernameOneDriveDocuments. The alternative is not using c:usersusernameDocuments.

2) The same should be true to changing, deleting, or renaming a file.

It is clear to me that the cloud is a place to share files with other individuals or groups whom I give permission(s).

Thanks. This is something I did overlook and did not try yet, and I will work through it. It is interesting in W8.1 that you go to “Help and Support” but only if you have the classic Start button or go to Search and type in Help and Support. Here you enter SKYDRIVE and not OneDrive. The latter entry shows 0 results while SkyDrive shows all results, and the results then show OneDrive and in the text. With W 8 Update, MS apparently forgot something.

I made some assumptions here on the OneDrive concept of Microsoft in order to understand how it works. My research on the net has not shown one website that would give me an understanding in view of the issue(s) I described here. Please help.

Sorry I made a mistake in my post. What c:OneDriveDocumentsabc should be c:UsersUsernameOneDriveDocumentsabc (please note: when I right click on the said folder and chose Properties it still says c:UsersUsernameSkyDriveDocuments). The reason why I made that mistake is because of how OneDrive is displayed in File Explorer, look at the picture from my earlier post. I simply assumed a path as I showed in my post. So, a big apology, I was a bit stupid.

Just did a change to an existing file in c:UsersUsernameDocumentsabc. No sync with c:OneDriveDocumentsabc whatsoever. I am beginning to doubt the whole concept of cloud computing, UNLESS it means this: make the changes in the cloud and hope for sync downwards to the desktop, OR do not use the desktop but only the cloud.