Windows 8.1 Update has the search icon and power off button at the top right side on the home screen.After the interesting piece at Microsoft Abandons Windows 8.1: Take Immediate Action Or Be Cut Off Like Windows XP I decided to make sure it is installed on all my Windows 8.x systems. That wasn’t so easy as “apply this update”.
There are various reasons the update can fail (at least one is even lying, see below) and there is no obviously automated way to check it has been applied.
First of all, two checks to see if Windows 8.1 Update is installed. From my question Batch file: how to check if Windows 8.1 update is installed – Super User I learned this simple statement:
reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion" /v BuildLabEx
If it returns a value of 17031 or higher, then Windows 8.1 Update is installed. The second and third scripts at How to differentiate Windows 8.1 Update 1 from Windows 8.1? are elaborating on that version number.
But for the average user it is even easier: on the home screen, check if the search icon (magnification glass) is visible. See the image on the right.
Potential error messages
Quite a few users get error messages when installing the update. Some of them are these: Read the rest of this entry »
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