Windows 8.1 update has been stuck in "Preparing to install" mode for 3 days now and I cannot stop it

My Windows 8.1 update has been showing "Preparing to install..." for 3 days now. When I click "Stop installation" it says I need to provide administrator permission and doesn't have any way for me to provide this. My account is the administrator
account for my laptop.
I have already seen a similar thread that said to open a command prompt with admin privileges and type "slmgr -skms", but the solution did NOT work. Basically, it said the usage was incorrect and popped up 5 windows of information that I didn't
know how to interpret (yes, I tried to provide the options it wanted, but they were incorrect).
Any advice would be appreciated!

Ah! This did the trick! Thanks!
In case anyone else has this problem, on Windows 8.1 I had to open up the Control Panel, then type "troubleshooter" in the search box. I clicked "Troubleshooting" and then found "Fix problems with Windows Update" under the System and Security section.

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Message was edited by: Carolyn

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Ah! This did the trick! Thanks!
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<blockquote>
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Windows 8.1 update has been stuck in "Preparing to install" mode for 3 days now and I cannot stop it

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