partitioning - Windows 8.1 Upgrade fails with error code 0x80070652

I have a Thinkpad T530 running Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.04 from a MBR-partitioned disk, with GRUB being the installed boot loader. I can see that the Windows 8.1 upgrade is offered to me in the Market, but I receive the 0x80070652 error code when I try to install the upgrade. It downloads fine, but fails during preparation.

More (may be too much) details about my setup:

• I initially upgraded to Windows 8 Pro with Media Center 64-Bit via upgrade offer from Windows 7 64-Bit without keeping any data.


• Latest Intel graphics drivers from Windows Update are already installed. My laptop has only integrated Intel graphics, no AMD or Nvidia.


• I have 4 partitions on the drive, with all of them being primary partitions.
  
  
  
  • The table looks like this: Ubuntu LTS Swap, Ubuntu LTS root filesystem, Ubuntu LTS /home partition, Windows 8.
  
  


• I also have a GPT-partitioned mSATA SSD running the latest Ubuntu non-LTS-release, but I removed that to do the upgrade.

As I said, I already tried removing the GPT partitioned SSD and tried only booting legacy/MBR style, leaving me with error code 0x80070652 during (attempt to install/prepare) the Windows 8.1 upgrade.

I also tried:

• Looking up the error code. I remember reading a knowledge base article that suggested moving/deleting the contents of C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download. I did that, but no luck.


• Executed "Disk Cleanup" as well as "Clean up system files".


• Freed up more than 30 GiB of available diskspace on the Windows partition.


• Disabled swap file and hibernation and also deleting the corresponding files. Not luck, enabled them again.


• Runnning WindowsUpgradeAssistant.exe and removing all incompatible applications (it gave me only 3).

Answer

I read that one needs more than 30 GiB of available diskspace and incrementally freed up 5 GB to try again until it continued at around 45 GB of free diskspace.

I then received error code 0x80070002 in my case and was able to fix that. The upgrade went through without any further issues.