Solved 8.1 Pro Problems reinstall

[marcycn]

I have an Acer Aspire e 17 that belonged to someone who died and no one knew his password so I had to reinstall 8.1. There is only 4GB RAM so I don't want to bring it to Windows 10 and when I reinstalled it to the original 8.1 Home he gave me some problems I was unable to fix. Sorry, it's been days ago and I don't remember specifics. Anyway, I had the 8.1 64bit ISO on a DVD so I changed the BIOS to boot off the DVD drive. It did it's thing and asked for the key which I put my PRO key in and it took it ok.

It went through all the steps and ended up with what I thought was a working Windows 8.1 Pro laptop.

Problems:
NO WIFI and no way I could find to add it. It had WIFI when I did the first reinstall to Windows 8.1 Home.
When I went to the Programs in control panel there are NO programs there. That's a first for me and my experience goes back to Windows 3.1.
Couldn't change the date/time. It was set to the International Date Line and nothing I did would changed it.

I've looked everything up through Google that I can think of and nothing seems to work. The biggest light bulb here is that there is nothing installed for apps even though it said it was installing apps at one point. I tried both custom and express install. I've tried to install 4 times.

My question is this: How do I get a clean, workable Windows 8.1 Pro OS on this machine? Oddly enough, I have the the same laptop and bought it with Windows 8 on it back when that was the way to go.

 

[Mooly]

Most laptops have a recovery partition and a unique way of accessing it... which if you do that should take it all back to 'out of the box' state.

A true clean install in my book means using the DVD (or bootable USB drive containing the ISO) and not just reinstalling, but first using the advanced option to delete all existing partitions and taking the drive down to unallocated space. Then create a new single partition (I always use around 20Gb and then expand it after the install is complete).

If you want to troubleshoot your existing set up then I would look in Device Manager (found in control panel) and look for any yellow exclamation marks against the network adapter. You may need to manually install a driver (from the Acer site) to get the Wi-Fi to work.

I believe the free W8 to W10 offer still works... and I wouldn't hesitate tbh and would go for W10 everytime. 4Gb is plenty for a general purpose machine like the Acer.

 

[marcycn]

I've always seen and been able to use the recovery partition on many of the laptops I've reinstalled, including my own laptop that is the same model etc as the one I'm having trouble with. However, I couldn't get it to come up.

All my ISO files, Windows 7 Pro, 8.1Pro and 10 Pro are burned on DVD's and I've used them in the past with no problem. I've used the 8.1 Pro 4 times so far on this Acer.

There have been Device's with exclamation marks BUT with the problem of nothing showing up in Programs and Features I didn't see any reason to go through the headache of finding them all. Seems there should be some OS files in Programs. I installed Belarc Advisor and it shows up in my machine but not the problem one. Something just isn't right.

I don't have any idea where to find a key for a free copy of Windows 10 at this point.

I'd be happy if I could access the recovery partition and take the machine back to the original install. The option just hasn't been given to me. I have held down the shift key when restarting and it does come up with all sorts of options but not one took me back to the original, not even the one that says it will.

Edited at night: Fifth install of 8.1 Pro seems to be doing better.

 

[Mooly]

I think you need to totally wipe the HDD (done during a clean install) and start again tbh.

Why not try a clean install of W10 and see if your 8.1Pro license is still accepted. Making a bootable USB Flash Drive using the official Media Creation Tool is the best option imo.
Clean Install Windows 10

Although the free upgrade offer finished months ago, I have seen reports that it still works and is accepted.

Driver issues that show in Device Manager are separate issues to anything in Programs and Features.

 

[marcycn]

Thanks for the help. It's all working and back with the owner. I stayed with Windows 8.1. I tried Windows 10 with 4 GB when 10 came out and it just wasn't enough to work smoothly.

 

[Mooly]

Pleased to hear you have it sorted