Why does Windows 8 Upgrade assistant insist on downloading the upgrade from scratch when I quit it rather than resume the download?

I'm downloading the Windows 8 upgrade via the Windows 8 Upgrade assistant. I assumed the Upgrade assistant would resume the download when I quit it - however that doesn't seem to be the case.

If I quit it and then start, it starts the download from scratch. Why so? Is it possible to resume the download?

Solution 1:

With a little bit of help from Process Explorer, I figured out that upgrade was being downloaded to

%localappdata%\Microsoft\WebSetup\Download

Now, when I hit the Pause button then quit the Upgrade assistant, the file (the assistant creates a single .tmp file) remained in the folder.

However, if you quit the upgrade assistant directly, without hitting the Pause button, for some reason, the Upgrade assistant clears the folder. Why is it so, I don't know.

Moral of the story: Hit the pause button if you want to resume later, else you'll have to download from scratch

Solution 2:

Apparently, you can resume downloads by downloading another program, Windows8-Setup.exe. After I paused (just before my Windows 8 Release Preview automatically restarted again), I was able to download this to resume where I left off (at about 17% download progress, in my case).