[solved] Windows Update KB3200970 fails on Venue 8 Pro 5830

Lucky 7? After six logged fails (seemed like 10), the update took on my Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. I'm not sure why or exactly when it succeeded because I had to restart manually a couple of times because the screen went black after logging in. At one point, File Manager showed no links below the two top level links and showed a never completed progress bar when Quick Access was clicked. It went black after that. I think there may have been an auto restart after a very long time black, also.

I had a non-admin user setup and logged in to that account successfully and discovered in it that the update had succeeded. Now that login took a long time to get to the desktop and had a Windows setting up user..... for a long time so I wonder if it was the switch in users that completed the update or if that happens with each first login after the update. Returning to my normal account, there was a long drawn out process until I got the desktop.

I had prior to an earlier fail run the sfc /scannow and the Windows Update Troubleshooter a couple of times with no apparent benefit although some things were fixed. I also had paused OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive. I believe there was a fail after those actions because I had a fail today which would have been 36 hours later.

So switching to another user may have done the trick or been merely coincidental.

This may have been a contributing factor: I have a microSD card with a virtual drive on it. The virtual drive had fallen off in the update process giving Dropbox et al grief because that is where they point(ed). Later I discovered the reason that File Manager was hung up building an index and that killed the virtual drive was that the microSD card was somehow disconnected. Even though it was shown as drive D:, clicking on it said that it needed to be inserted. So I removed and reinserted it and File Manager sprang to life. Restarted and the virtual drive V: (using a portion of that card) not only appeared in the non-admin user but also I no longer had the black screen in my normal admin account. The majority of my programs are installed on the removable drive MicroSD card in order to conserve space on the 32GB system drive. That my screen went black after the probably successful update must have been due to the system failing to find something(s) on the now disconnected SD drive.

So it is possible that part of my problem with the update might be due to some glitch with microSD support somewhere in the update procedure. I'm not sure there is anything I can do about that. I think Microsoft has exhibited prior failure to adequately support tablets or other computers with small system drives and necessarily very dependent on the SD slot.