The Glade 4.0

Built my pc about 2 years ago, and bought the retail version of windows 8.1

Hesitantly, I eventually took the "free" windows 10 upgrade. That was many, many months ago it seems. It worked very well. Foolishly, I suppose, I never made a usb installer in case it went bad. Well, when they rolled out their anniversary update, it did.

I found myself with no way to reload 10. BSODs until finally a black screen of no return. I wasn't sure if it was windows and/or my SSD.

So, I loaded up my 8.1 disk and gave it a shot. Wiped my drive and installed fine. My key apparently still works, too. And after this, along with forced updates, I think I will stick with 8.1 going forward. There are things about 10 that were really nice, but not enough to make me go back.

Oh sure, I could download the installer and put it on a usb stick or something for the next time, but I don't think I will. After reading things and still unsure what Microsoft will allow with replacing hardware and allowing activation, it seems a gamble. I have my 8.1 disks I bought retail. I think I will wait until a future build to worry about giving 10 another shot. This really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Its been my experience that Windows install failures are 99% of the time the fault of bad RAM. If you have even the smallest RAM problem that your system can power through, the windows install will fail every time.

I've had a poor track record with upgrade-installs. If I have the time I just wipe and start fresh, hoping I can salvage my games easily.

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The Dude abides.

This is always the best method. I've started to really value things like Steam cloud for game saves, it makes reloading much less of a PITA. (And started to really miss when that support isn't there).