Has anybody who has upgraded Windows 8 through the Microsoft Store figured out a way to capture the Windows 8.1 update and slipstream it into Windows 8 to make a clean install of Windows 8.1? As it is now, the 8.1 update, strips out most registry customizations, leaves un-deleteable $Windows.~BT and Windows.old directories on my C:\ drive and junk throughout the appdata and Temp directories.

Edited October 18, 201312 yr by lurk&jerk

8.1 is a NEW Windows, not a MSU update like other Windows updates. You can download the ISO with this tool:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-product-key-only

Thanks, however, that doesn't seem to work for upgrades from 8.0 or at least it won't accept my serial. Seems to be for new 8.1 or 8.0 purchases only. So I'm back to square one.

BTW, for anybody else wondering about 8.1 changes, these are the one's MS doesn't tell you about that might affect your installation. The first four could eat up significant space on your %systemroot% drive:

• New persistent Default.migrated subfolder @ %appdata%
• New persistent $Windows.~BT @ %systemroot%
• New persistent Windows.old @ %systemroot%
• Turns System Restore back on to default and creates a system copy
• Resets UAC to default settings
• Resets most context menu settings to default
• Leaves customized OEM information on the System Property page but appears to remove the rating for the Windows Experience Index and doesn't appear to have a way to rerun the test
• Reset my 1GB Ram drive to 1MB for some reason. Can be increased after install
• No longer shows last five digits of your Windows product key on the System Property page. You can use this registry file workaround:

• Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00;Display the last five digits of your product ID on the Windows System Property Page where XXXXX is shown[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]"ProductId"="*****-XXXXX"

  To be continued. . .

Edited November 17, 201312 yr by lurk&jerk

I didn't read the above post before sending a message to Andre asking about $Windows.~BT and Windows.old!

Too bad, it seems that we can't delete these two folders, huh? They are not big on my computer however, one is 100 MB and the other 37 MB. I just don't like to see or have such folders on the Windows drive at all!

you can delete them with the disk cleanup wizard.

Andre,
I deleted them both by using Unlocker. I was wrong about the size of these two folders though. After deleting them, I have more than 2 GB of free space on the hard disk.

Btw, I notice something strange and silly about Win 8.1. I opened several applications on the Start Screen and then closed them one by one. After that, I saw them all still running in the Task Manager and I had to stop them there again. This new feature of Win 8.1 reminds me of the very first version of Win 8 I had 2 years ago!