Early this week Microsoft, like every other second Tuesday of the month, released its batch of updates for Windows and for all the Surface tablet family, and while updates aims to make devices better and more secure, that’s not always the case. On the Patch Tuesday for December 2013 many users are reporting at the Microsoft support site that installing the latest firmware update on their Surface Pro 2 running Windows 8.1 is causing error messages during the install.
One particular complaint reads:
[…] Windows Update says the firmware update failed with error code “WindowsUpdate_80070490 OR WindowsUpdate_dt000”. Now when I close my Type Cover 2 Lid or SLEEP comes on from a Timeout, my Surface Pro 2 shuts down rather than sleeps. Also, apparently I’ve never heard my Surface Pro 2 fans before. During the shutdown process, they now come on with a big burst […].
Lucky someone seems to have found a workaround until Microsoft offers an official fix for this issue:
Instructions
1. Open Command Prompt (as administrator) and run the following command:
2. Delete the datastore.edb file stored in the following path:
3. Open the Run command and type cleanmgr and the click on Clean up system files. Make sure that windows software updates are selected and perform disk cleanup. This will take a few minutes.
4. Restart Windows 8.1.
5. Run Windows Update, all history will be gone but it will detect the firmware update again and this time it will install successfully.
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].