Uninstalling Windows 8.1 by System Refresh

[Alexandra Borja]

Hello. I bought an ASUS Vivobook S400 that came with a preinstalled Windows 8 back in 2012. Around last year, I upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the Windows Store App. I want to do a System Refresh. Will it be easy to just perform it if I want to go back to Windows 8?

 

[dodger46]

Hello. I bought an ASUS Vivobook S400 that came with a preinstalled Windows 8 back in 2012. Around last year, I upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the Windows Store App. I want to do a System Refresh. Will it be easy to just perform it if I want to go back to Windows 8?

Interesting question. Normally Refresh and Reset rely on the Recovery Partition on a pre-installed laptop to use as a reference. Question is, did the 8.1 Upgrade also update the Recovery Partition? I don't have a pre-installed machine to try that on, so don't know the answer. A lot depends on whether you want to return to plain 8 through choice, or just to refresh 8.1 for other reasons. F9 at Power On gets you into Advanced Options rather than accessing the Recovery Partition direct, so I suspect it will just Refresh/reset your machine to 8.1 I don't see any option in your Manual to access the Recovery Partition direct, It may be possible to obtain Recovery media from Asus to revert to 8, but I suspect that will be expensive!