Win 8.1 Pro REFRESH not working “missing files”

I found information on Refreshing Win 8.1 when you can’t get that done. Downloading 8.0 then canceling and downloading 8.1 … but you need your Win 8.0 key … which I can’t find for my upgraded from Win 7 computer … I have my WMC key … but no such animal as my original Win 8 key that I software download upgraded from Win 7 that was built-in.

Refresh says files are missing. Wonderful! I tried it on my Win 8.1 Pro w/MC Ultrabook that was bought as Win 8.0 Pro pre-installed (media center added later.) Refresh works on that machine.

I still have Win 7 recovery on the harddrive. That’s not an option though.

The silly thing is I would’ve not thought about REFRESH and known it wouldn’t work and be bothered by it if the stupid Group Policy for ‘Force a specific lock screen image’ would actually work.

I cannot stand the image that shows now when someone isn’t logged in. I have it posted in the previous blog post. The Win 8 picture of the tower was much more tolerable. I have no option of what to do without seeing if Refresh will fix it (as some posts on other sites intimated that it might)

Right now I’m making a WIM “recovery image” … we’ll see if that actually gets created and works.

Do I hate Windows 8 or Windows 8.1? No. I like Windows. The only Windows I would say I hated was Vista. Good Riddance.

Win 8 is powerful and for most everything I want to do, it works. It’s just this silly picture thing. I want it to work how I want it to work without downloading some other program.

I’d really like to institute my own profile’s slideshow in the case of no one logged in. That’s not gonna happen, but just one flipping picture should be do-able. Roll Eyes.

[October 22, 2013  ]Edit: The WIM built but didn’t work.

I followed the information about downloading 8.0 cancelling and downloading 8.1 … but it messed up my USB Stick. I burned two dvd’s and neither worked. I scrapped it all and tried from the beginning again, and watched the whole download and burn and Refresh so that it would go flawlessly. Indeed this time it did, it was not fun, the messed up usb stick and worthless afternoon but by evening I was re-installing programs and getting things right. Except for the main annoyance I had in the very beginning of 8.1 installing … that dratted default Lock Screen.

I’m figuring that in some way, form or fashion my WORKGROUP WIN 8.1 Pro computer with multiple users on it just isn’t going to work with Group Policy for that, though I can force other Group Policies, that simple one just doesn’t work.

I’ll have to tackle taking ownership of certain folders and all that, at some later time.

Refreshing Win 8.1 on this computer was the right thing to do. I Upgraded Win 7 Pro 64 with Win 8.0 Pro 64 downloaded in 2012. Now 8.1 upgraded via Metro Store.

Refresh, with the downloaded iso on dvd did what I was wishing for, cleaned out lots of programs that we just don’t need, everything important still there, and easily can find most saved data for programs we want to use again in windows.old. Most our stuff was still there, of course, and lots of our stuff is cloud saved, so it works great to Refresh. It cleaned up All-In-One family touchscreen computer, without the pain of Clean install, so it worked and now I have a backup disk, which I DIDN’T before. 🙂

I’ll make a disk for my desktop computer too, and get USB sticks for our ultrabooks that don’t have disk drives. Software on actual device for rescue doesn’t always work, and I had a scare with my ultrabook today, no usb device to use and my ultrabook said HP, wait, Please Wait, circle to nothing, when I turned it on this morning.

Usually when it’s dead I plug it in and it boots up to Choose language touchscreen, and then I can go right to Windows …. this time, none of that happened. Blank screen with mouse and touch available for no reasonable use.

I went nuts looking for another usb stick but couldn’t find one. Of course I have a Memory Stick Pro … but no dice with Win 8 download helper to get it onto a device.

My only other option would be an external hard drive and I’d have to take the iso apart, extract it, and then it would work on an active external drive. But the tool doesn’t extract the files like that. It will put them only on a USB Flash device. Or ISO to use. Rip my hair out!

While I was banging around looking for a solution I went back to my machine and turned it on again, same thing, let it sit longer, went away, came back, it was on the language screen. Hurray!

It took my touch on English and I then could choose to go to Windows 8.1.

Usually this goes fast, but it didn’t this time, it took awhile and got to my Lock Screen, finally.

It’s fine now, but I’m afraid to shut down, and ghastly afraid of letting the battery go down to nil. I need to usb install of Win 8.1 for this poor baby to feel safe (seeing as all kinds of things bad have happened to it and it keeps trucking, cat peed on my bag it was in and got that on part of the motherboard, I got it off and dealt with it. Another time it took a hard tumble to the floor, and the right front of it dented and the plastic corner broke off. I glued it back on with Ranger Glossy Accents, no kidding. I used my craft hammer to bang the dented top down to a more manageable spot.

I opened it up and put in more memory and blah, blah, blah, I know how simple this computer is to build and it’s quite expensive for how simple it is. It’s fancy and all with no drive, but simple because of that, and the battery can be changed, but not simple and easy, just easy enough for a tech friendly person. Anyone can add more Memory though. It’s so much nicer with 8GB. And no warranty of any kind either 😉