Win 8 key update

I'm pretty sure that earlier this year there was an important update for Win 8 without which no further updates would be installed but I'm having difficulty identifying it. It's for Win 8, not 8.1.

Reason I need to check if I have it is because I have Win 8 in a VM and it fails every time when I try to update it to 8.1. There can be many reasons for this and I want to eliminate this one as a possibility.

 

That can't be it David, it says it's for 8.1 and when I tried to install it anyway it says it is not applicable to this OS.

 

2919355 is an update for 8.1, not for 8. It isn't relevant to my question.

 

Thanks David, I'll check them out

 

It seems MS has changed all of those to 8.1, I can hardly find anything related to 8 now, yet only yesterday when I tried again to update to 8.1, WU did find and install 7 or 8 updates I haven't seen previously.

This a 32 bit install btw, easier on a vm.

 

Like everything else I've looked it's now listed as for 8.1, and when I tried again to install it I got the same not applicable response.

I'm beginning to wonder how other poor sods who find it necessary to revert to Win 8 are going to manage to update their systems. If they all meet the same wall I'm hitting, not much hope unless WU does it for them.

 

Yeah, I've used that way before, but from where I'm at right now this is the killer -

If you're updating to Windows 8.1, this PC must be running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 Preview. If you already have the latest version of Windows 8 installed on your PC, you can update to Windows 8.1 in the Windows Store for free.

I don't have a spare 7 key, long since threw away the 8.1 Preview, and the Store route brings us right back to where we came in :***

I was only doing this because I have an unused Win 8 licence key. Think I'll forget it, but thanks for trying to sort it

EDIT - of course, the inability to update to 8.1 may have nothing at all to do with missing updates, might be something else altogether. I've tried pretty well all the suggestions on the web.. none of them worked for me.

 

As much as I like VMWare I gave up on Win 8 installs. Instead I grabbed an old HDD and physically swap the boot disk. I run a test bench enclosure so swapping two connectors makes an easy change from Win 7 to Win 8.
You know Win 8 will never get out of beta?

 

Well Win 10 Tech Preview has installed just fine and that's clearly just Win 8.1 with different paint But the Win 8.1 I want to install is purely for software testing and such, not an everyday system, and VMware is the perfect tool for that and dual booting is the second. Disk swapping?? Not for me.

They can leave it as it is as far as I am concerned, best system I've got.