I'm off to bed for now but hoping you can leave some suggestions. I need to upgrade all of my systems from Windows 8 Pro with Media Center to Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center but upgrading to Pro or Pro with Media Center reports it's unsupported using the ISOs. Any suggestions how to complete this?
Damn it... That's what I was afraid of. On the other hand I have an upgrade from 8 Pro WMC to 8.1 Pro running right now in a VMWare test. The interesting thing I found out though was that the upgrades would not run from any disc using the EI.cfg. Has this been disabled in Windows 8.1?
This always was disabled. Simply because it is not upgrading. This is downgrading SKUs and is not supported in the UpgradeMatrix. The same way as you can't for example "upgrade" Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Starter or any other edition below Ultimate.
The Windows 8 Pro with Media Center to Windows 8.1 Pro is running without issue, it started the upgrade fine. The issue is anytime I use a CD that has the EI.cfg in the Sources folder it will not process the same upgrade when selecting either my Windows 8.1 Pro or Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center images in the install.wim or if I use the Metro based setup it says the product key is invalid eventhough I am not prompted for one and one is never entered. Something with the EI.cfg seems messed up now.
The update from 8.0 Pro (x64) with WMC to 8.1 Pro without WMC worked perfectly fine for me. I just added WMC with my WMC key after the upgrade and that worked fine too.