Cannot upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 10 "error code 0x80072f8f"

I am unable to upgrade a Windows 8 laptop to Windows 10 using the free upgrade from Microsoft that they had years ago when they were offering it. I saved the exe that was downloaded.

It has NEVER failed me in the past—in fact, I upgraded my mother's Windows 8 PC to Windows 10 just last month and she had a ton of crap on it. I cannot even get it to download on mine EVEN AFTER a factory reset wiping all files.

Every time it gets to the "downloading Windows 10" it ALWAYS errors out as:

"Something went wrong. Couldn't download Windows 10. Please check your network settings and try again. error code 0x80072f8f"

A Google search of the error code says the only time you get that error code is if your date/time is incorrect. But nothing could be further from the truth! My date and time IS INDEED correct! I even have the correct time zone. But the problem still persists!

I tried using a negative operator "-time" to exclude time from the search but then ONLY results pertaining to error code 0x80072f8f - 0x20000 came up and there is NO 0x20000 in my error code! there is ONLY: error code 0x80072f8f

Does anybody know what the problem could be?

zbook said:

Troubleshooting Windows upgrade failures can take significant time.

If you are willing to manually backup files and reinstall drivers and applications a clean install can be performed.

Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First

You did NOT read my post in its entirety. I said that a factory reset wiping all files was done on the machine prior to attempting to install Windows 10

It says "Windows 8" in properties for "My Computer" does that mean it is vanilla 8 and not 8.1?

Why do I need 8.1? From my understanding, the tool works with Windows 7 so shouldn't it also work with vanilla 8?

Ornithophilia said:

....I cannot even get it to download on mine EVEN AFTER a factory reset wiping all files....

If you have done a factory reset then there's little left on the PC that you'd need to keep. You could use this tutorial to do a clean install.

Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First

Ornithophilia said:

It says "Windows 8" in properties for "My Computer" does that mean it is vanilla 8 and not 8.1?

Look here to see if it says '8.1'

Why do I need 8.1? From my understanding, the tool works with Windows 7 so shouldn't it also work with vanilla 8?

Microsoft said:

Windows 8.0: You can't upgrade directly from Windows 8.0 to Windows 10. To upgrade from Windows 8.0, you must first install the Windows 8.1 update

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...-upgrade-paths

As already suggested, a clean install is the best option. To activate Win 10 you need to save Win 8 activation file before the you do it.
Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First.