Ever since MS-DOS was new & cool PC performance declines with usage. I can see no reason to believe that WinDoze will ever change. As long Bill or his henchman successors can blindside users and drag them into routinely buying new hardware to speed up new crappy software this will not change. He likes being a Billionaire. Try Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc. etc. Free, Stable, Open Source Software!!

Well, having initiated the process as described, I get a message that says I shall have to go to the WIndoze Store to get 8.1 and the additional update! It cost me €50 to get my PC upgraded to 8.1 because the ´free´ (F***ing useless) update process would not work on my Win 8.0 Samsung PC despite numerous attempts commencing in November last year, until I gave up and paid the professionals to do a full reinstall and upgrade in May! Sorry but I am not going to risk another upgrade to 8.1 saga through the Win Store! Look very carefully before you leap! The sooner we can all get away from Windoze and its fundamentally flawed software the better!

@StWils
Please do advise on the version of Linux that will not trash everything present on the disk AS also upgrade to the newest version without screwing up. So long as Linux installation is going to insist on writing the boot sector to my MBR without the option of selecting the installation partition for it, I am no longer willing to take a chance on it any more.
BTW I still find good old Norton Ghost to be the best one yet. After installing the OS and all the required software I move "My Documents" and the pagefile to "D" drive. Install EasyBCD and add the Ghost bootable floppy image to the list. Now create a ghost image and you are all done. When you restore this ghost image only thing you would need to update is the antivirus signature file. Repeat the ghost image creation process every fortnight or so and you have the best of both wordls.

8.1 does have stability issues - But - considering the work Microsoft went through to have a linked apps and news page from their touch central "start" page it can be over looked. The Kindle app is superb! I think Microsoft should provide free cloud back up of the operating system that's easy to activate, or at least a self correcting diagnostic program that internally monitors the system.

Ty so much for your post. Really helped me a lot... I was trying to reset my Windows 8.1 and couldn't because of missing files.

I tried downloading the file from command prompt but i ended with a blank file (no tools to open) thats 240gb. I am pretty sure i did something wron ._.

Worked like a charm! Thank you very much :)

I wanted to make such a command control file, let my laptop stay on for the night. next day I woke up and it was unsuccesfull. what to do? Did I do something wrong?
greets Jaimey

i tried 5 times cmd thing step, and i'm sure i typed correctly as shown above, but it always failed writing image on 37%. i can't figure out what's wrong:( please help, thank you very much.
is there any way to get customrefresh.wim file from the internet?

Hello, i did the cmd part because i was getting the missing files error and I still get them. I think the cmd process went fine, what could be the problem? Thanks!