Back to Windows 8.1 and how to update when your system doesn't want to.

Sadly my trusty surface pro 3 developed a hardware issue with the Wifi/bluetooth chip.  I had to return it and after a month wait received my replacement.  Unfortunately the replacement machine only had Windows 8.1 on it (rather than Windows 10 which is what the machine I had returned was running).  Even worse, when I went to check for windows updates, the system wouldn't find any, just checking forever with no progress.

I tried the usual fixes, including using the windows troubleshooter, a refresh and even a couple of clean re-installs, all with no joy.

The solution that finally worked was to manually install an update (which deals with fixing update issues).  Here is a link on the update:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3112336/windows-update-client-for-windows-8.1-and-windows-server-2012-r2-december-2015

Once I had installed this update and restarted checking for updates finally worked (it found 183 critical updates!)  

The happy end to the story is that I got in touch with microsoft help and they were able to install windows 10 on my machine, so I finally have an up to date working OS, just in time for the start of semester.