Upgrade your Surface RT / Windows RT Device 8.1 Preview to 8.1 RTM

First published on MSDN on Oct 18, 2013

I've been running the 8.1 Preview on my Windows RT device since it was available. It was a nice improvement. Yesterday the RTM version of 8.1 was available, and I wanted to get it on my Surface RT running Windows RT. I checked Windows Update and it wasn't an option. I checked the Store, and I was seeing some odd behavior. I couldn't' find it via search, although I wasn't 100% of the title of what I was looking for. I did some digging, and it turns out there's an easy way to do the upgrade. Open a browser and type in "ms-windows-store:WindowsUpgrade" (without the quotes). This will open a link to the Upgrade in the Windows Store. From there I clicked the install button and let it do it's magic. I'm now running Windows 8.1 RTM on my Surface RT.

Warning: The store just showed the spinning dotted circle for a while after clicking install. The machine was installing the update during this time. You can bring up the task manager to see if the machine is working. Press Ctrl-Shift-Escape to bring it up. Hit the more details arrow. Then switch to the performance tab. You should see CPU activity. Mine stayed above 20% the whole time and spiked higher.

UPDATE: It appears that the 8.1 preview has been temporarily pulled. If this method doesn't work, the update is likely not back yet.