I tried to Update MikTex as I have done before, with the Update (admin) console. I get a window with a few items checked and grayed out "Select All" and "Select None" buttons. I clicked on Next and the update does something. MikTex cannot start - I get an error message about a missing module, etc.
I uninstalled it (it did not go smoothly) and installed it again. It worked but it could not automatically install a package on one computer; and worked well on another. The updater still behaves the same way.
This is on two different machines, both running Win 8.1.