VMware Player and Win 8.1

I specced my new PC with Win 7 Pro x64 on a 120GB SSD with a 1TB WD HDD for data. It's a nice system but I also wanted access to Win 8.1. and have been attempting that in VMware. Win 8 installed and activated in the VM just fine and after all Win 8 updates had been installed it duly offered me the Win 8.1 upgrade. But that fails every time and when I run the troubleshooter it tells me that I'm missing a necessary partition. It then reverts me to Win 8.

Has anyone else had any experience with this?

How do you download Windows 8.1 and clean install Windows 8.1, if you have a Windows 8 product key? -> link

OK, thanks. That might be a (rather long winded) way around this but having got 8 installed, updated and activated, and as 8.1 system requirements are the same as those for 8, I was not expecting to have to go back to square one. :shock: