Hi, 

I have a SONY VAIO SVS1511V9ES laptop. I have replaced the original HD with a Samsung 830 SSD. The computer is fast as hell and it is a pleasure to work with it, except... 

Up to the point when Windows 8.1 update was launched I experienced no issues at all. All running smoothly and Windows updates installing regularly as they arrived. 

Since (probably) summer 2014, when I first got the option to update to Windows 8.1, problems started. 

First of all, the update to Windows 8.1 fails with the very well known message Sorry, we couldn't complete the update to Windows 8.1. We've restored your previous version of Windows to this PC.

After trying several times, I literally gave up on the update, moreover with Sony claiming on the support pages that with my laptop's model, the update may not be successful. OK. It is pretty surprising Sony simply disregarded their premium product owners... *****?

Following this frustrating experience, regular Windows updates started failing to install. Every attempt to install the downloaded updates resulted in a fail and reverting changes. Over and over again. 

Alongside with this, my laptop keeps on trying to update to Windows 8.1... and failing. The last attepmt was last night. I turned automatic updates off, but it seems not to have any effect. 

The story continues... 

So I thought I need a clean install. Tried from scratch with the original hard drive. First, installing and updating Windows 7. After about 16 hours of downloading updates and restarting, I had a clean istall of Windows 8. Halleluyah!!!

The update to Windows 8.1 however failed all the sam as before. I think it froze on the Select network  screen. Great.. almost two days of unproductive activity went donw the drain. 

So I got back to my faulty image on the SSD and kept getting the same update fails as before. 

I do not give up easily, so I got a new SSD ($200) - same size, newer model. Copied the recovery image and tried again. It was much faster, though, but the result was the same. I even started having problems to fully update Windows 8. I discovered, that I I install 2-4 updates at ince only, I get a good chance that gradually I manage to get the system updated. Well, yes and no... One update kept stubbornly failing and reverting and then tring to get installed over and over again. On my working but faulty system, it is the KB3002885. 

I even tried Sony's phine support and it was totally useless. 

...so I gave it another (last) chance... 

Because the laptop had a Windows 7 preinstalled and I ourchased an upgrade key, there is no way of using and PID with a clean retial installation of the system. The solution was to download a Windows 8.1 image and try to install Windows 8.1 from scratch. I managed to do that without having to purchase the PID (before i make sure it works). Yes, I was ready to spend the extra $100 just to gain peace of mind... 

The installation went OK, but for some reason, the Sony Update application is missing and I have two devices reporting an issue in Device manager. Bot have sthing to do with the chipset. 

The hotkeys are not working an there are some more issues. Again: *****?

So I am back with my old system again and really frustrated (to be honest: totally pi**ed off) with Sony's approach. 

Can I get any advice on all this? I like the laptop, but this is nonsense... Obviously, this is my lats purchase of a VAIO product and I will not recommend it to anybody else.

Thanks, 

Martin