Question Desperate need of help regarding windows 8.1 installation

[BamFC]

Hello, this is my first time ever using a forum, so i dont know if im doing things right or not, but i genuinely need all the help i could get regarding this dilemma of mine

Essentially, im trying to install windows 8.1 from windows 10, well you see my mother bought me years ago a HP pavilion20-303la all in one pc, it had windows 8.1 preinstalled and i installed windows 10 recently as a test, of course i only did so upon knowing that i had a 10 day window to revert back if things didnt seem right, however this is where my problem started, on the same day i installed windows 10 a technician had come to my house and turned off the power to fix some wires, this happened while i was downloading updates after logging in with my email, because of this i got a black screen upon booting my pc, at this point i had panicked and started searching for solutions and thus went to the winre options, i dont remember which winre option i selected but while it did fix my problem it had also uninstalled everything i had and while it did keep my personal folders with images and videos it also prevented me from returning to windows 8.1 since apparently the option i selected deletes some stuff from the old.windows folder that allows this.

Right now im depressed and stuck with windows 10, while my pc runs "perfectly" fine, in order words there are no problems whatsoever, i do have performance issues which is why i wish to reinstall windows 8.1

Now, i have a big question regarding this whole process of installing windows which is why i had told my whole story, and that is, are there any risk of bumping with an error because of everything i had gone through ? you see, i ended up finding out about something called BSOD error 0xc00002e3 in youtube comments, apparently this error may commonly happen because of pc compatibility or drivers conflicting or something like that, im really anxious because of this and hope to get an answer from someone experienced with pc's to see if im worrying over nothing, also, i dont know if knowing this helps but when it comes to my pc i havent changed anything pc parts related since the day i got this pc, as for drivers i havent installed anything before or after installing windows 10, much less even downloaded anything.

Another thing i also want to ask is about the installation with usb, unfortunately my one and only usb broke months ago, i dont know anyone whom i could borrow one from and dont have money to buy a new one, which is why i want to ask about this alternative that is using my old android 7 phone which i dont use anymore since years ago as a usb flashdrive, this is something that i recently found in youtube, i hope some one with experience could take a look at it and give me their opinion youtube.com/watch?v=Solq5Vfci6c&t=68s

 

[BFG-9000]

While it makes more sense to try to fix the performance issues in Windows 10 as it will still be supported for 2 more years, than reinstall an OS that is already end-of-life, most HP computers do have a recovery partition.

You were supposed to create a bootable HP Recovery Media disc while the system was still working to install from this partition, but your system manual may indicate how to do that without it (for example many HPs have you press F11 on power-on to start the Recovery Manager). In any case this sort of thing is never done from within Windows 10 itself.

Be aware that a restoration will erase everything from the system partition so you should copy your personal folders, images and videos off of it while still using your "perfectly" working Windows 10. There are indeed ways to sort of turn an android phone into a flash drive to do this if you have the data cable and know your way around Android settings... but not for use as Windows Install Media. And it will be an extremely outdated version of Windows 8 that will be restored so you should expect performance to be awful until all of the updates get installed.

 

[BamFC]

While it makes more sense to try to fix the performance issues in Windows 10 as it will still be supported for 2 more years, than reinstall an OS that is already end-of-life, most HP computers do have a recovery partition.

You were supposed to create a bootable HP Recovery Media disc while the system was still working to install from this partition, but your system manual may indicate how to do that without it (for example many HPs have you press F11 on power-on to start the Recovery Manager). In any case this sort of thing is never done from within Windows 10 itself.

Be aware that a restoration will erase everything from the system partition so you should copy your personal folders, images and videos off of it while still using your "perfectly" working Windows 10. There are indeed ways to sort of turn an android phone into a flash drive to do this if you have the data cable and know your way around Android settings... but not for use as Windows Install Media. And it will be an extremely outdated version of Windows 8 that will be restored so you should expect performance to be awful until all of the updates get installed.

I do have a partition called "recovery" that ive never touched ever, am i supposed to do as you told me to revert back to windows 8.1 ? im sorry if im being annoying, its just that i know little to nothing about pc and so im scared, please tell me if i understood wrongly or not

 

[BFG-9000]

You really need to read your manual and follow it exactly as it refers to the recovery partition, as this is not a revert but a full wipe and image restoration to how the PC originally came out-of-the-box all those years ago. With whatever preinstalled junk like AOL or McAfee that HP decided to include back then.

 

[BamFC]

You really need to read your manual and follow it exactly as it refers to the recovery partition, as this is not a revert but a full wipe and image restoration to how the PC originally came out-of-the-box all those years ago. With whatever preinstalled junk like AOL or McAfee that HP decided to include back then.

it seems like i cant perfom your advice to do a factory reset, im really sad, it seems like i lost my hp apps, regarding your sugestion about windows 10 perfomance, do you happen to know a video or a guide on what to do ? if not then somehow one way or another i would need to find a usb to perfom this downgrade

 

[Darkscythe]

Hi! According to what I've read, you want to make a bootable drive, but don't have a USB flash drive. To do so, you will need a windows 8.1/8 iso, and an internet connection.

NOTE: This process involves messing with the BCD configuration. Follow the steps I give with utmost care, or you may be stuck with a system that won't boot.

1- Install EasyBCD from NeoSmart's Website (You dont need the premium version, community edition is fine).

2- Press Win+X and open disk manager. Create a 15gb Parition(Let's call 15gb partition the "D" drive)

3- Using WinRAR/7zip, extract your windows 8/8.1 iso to drive "D:"

4-Launch EasyBCD and select the "Add new Entry" option

5- Under the 'Portable/External Media', area, select WinPE

6- Give it a name (I'd recommend that you dont name it Windows 8/Windows 8.1 to prevent confusion. I personally do "Windows Install") and go to the path box and click on the file icon.

7- Go to "D:/*Extracted Windows 8.1 ISO*/sources/boot.wim" Note that the drive letter "D" is just the name of the 15gb partition.

8- Next to the folder icon you just clicked in step 6, there is a green "+" sign. Click it.

9- On your left, click on the edit boot menu. Make sure that two entries are there and click on "Save settings". I would recommend that you turn off Metro bootloader.

IMPORTANT POINTER- If you are using a laptop, make sure you have atleast 40% around 60mins of battery life left. It is a good Idea to plug your laptop in. If you are using a PC/AIO, dont unplug the system during install...

10- Reboot your system and when it asks to select and OS, select Windows Install, or whatever name you gave in step 6

11- BOOM! you are IN windows installer. Enter your product key and install windows on the old windows 10 partiton. DO NOT OVERWRITE THE 15GB PARTITION. [I don't smile bright on pirating windows, but if you don't have the product key, boot into windows 10, and refer to this guide: https://www.techmesto.com/install-windows-8-1-without-product-key/ |Whatever they make you do to the USB drive, just do it to the Folder in the 15gb partition]

12- Once in Windows 8.1, copy your required files from the windows.old folder in your C: drive. You can now delete the partition in which your extracted windows 8/8.1 iso was.

13- To remove the windows install option during startup, you CAN use EasyBCD. But that is unnecessary. Just search for "System configuration". Open it and click on the boot tab. Delete every entry except the one that says, Current OS; Default OS; [Else your system wont boot]

And that's how to install windows without a USB thumb drive!

-------------------------------------------------------

What I told you to do is make a partition which acts like a usb. I told to use EasyBCD so you could make it bootable{I could have told you how to do it using cmd, but i prefer using EasyBCD, coz it's EASY.}

 

[rtp]

(I see this post is a few months old, but this information may help the original person or someone else.)

I am assuming this person does not have a CD/DVD drive?

Microsoft is now making ISOs available on its website, and I don't mean limited-time "Release Candidates". I had a laptop in storage for a couple years which came with Windows 7, but borked the original install when resizing partitions for a multi-boot system. I carefully followed the partition scheme as described in support articles on https://microsoft.com, but they must have missed a partition, because I could not recover my system after, and I thought I had no drivers DVD. (I did, but forgot and had misplaced it, which I found later.) I knew I should have paid $25 for a DVD in the mail before I changed anything!

However, I had a student-licensed Windows Vista which can be installed on as many computers as I wish. I liked Vista personally, but it doesn't support USB 3 and wasn't 64-bit and I'm sure there would be other issues. (Lack of USB 3 was unacceptable because I can't access backups and saved installers that are on an external device.)

You'd think MS would charge for upgrades via ISO, wouldn't you? Well, they don't, at least not for 8.1! So I went from Vista to 8.1 64-bit for FREE and have a fully-validated Windows.

There's a little more to the story: I couldn't use Microsoft's Media Creation Tool because it requires an Internet connection even if you already have the tool and the ISO. I don't have Internet (at home) and could not spend that amount of time on a public computer. But I found some other ISOs on https://archive.org which are ISOs of the complete install disk, and that's what I ultimately used.

The bottom line is you can get a non-pirated, working ISO from Microsoft or on https://archive.org and upgrade to and from some versions for free now! Surely downgrading would be possible, too! (And maybe this only applies to Home Editions.)

Another thing, one could use a Linux DVD to copy files from Windows (any live distribution that can be used without installing or used either way, which is most of them these days). A low-resource Linux that runs in small amounts of RAM will work on both old and new computers, such as Puppy Linux, the Wary Puppy flavor. (At the Puppy boot menu you want to choose RAM mode.)