14 DAY TRIAL // Several users are complaining that Windows Update no longer works on their Windows RT tablets after Microsoft released the first Patch Tuesday fixes of the year and in some cases, the Windows Store refuses to load.
We first reported the issue more than one week ago, but the company is still looking into the problem as it can’t reproduce it on its own Surface tablets.
Steven_B, a Surface support engineer, said on the official Microsoft forums that resetting may be an option, but this would obviously require the user to reinstall all updates and apps from scratch.
“Thank you for giving us as much information as possible. We are still unable to reproduce the issue on the Surface devices we have. I would like to ask if you can perform a Reset on your Surface to see if the issue persists after a full reset and all updates have been taken and apps installed again. This is information that we need for the Product Team so we can get the issue taken care of,” he said.
Our Surface RT tablets are affected by the same issue and although we’re yet to try a reset, mostly because this is quite a painful solution, a device refresh doesn’t make any difference.
While Windows Update gets unresponsive seconds after the spinning symbol is displayed, the Windows Store doesn’t load at all, so you can’t install any other apps or update the existing ones.
The only way to deal with this issue is to refresh the device and roll back updates, but make sure you block the latest Patch Tuesday fixes released by Microsoft in early January.
This isn’t obviously recommended, but it’s basically the only workaround to make both the Windows Update tool and the Windows Store to work until Microsoft releases a fix.