Win 10 Reverted To Win 8.1

[Hollis Jackson]

I have DellXPS 8700 which came with win8.1.

I upgraded in July 2016 to windows 10 home, prior to free upgrades ending.

I did make drive image both before and after upgrade.

Unfortunately, it was only on one external hard drive. And it had died!!


I was having trouble with Word 2010. When ever I tried to save any doc, I got message that I did not have permission. It would go thru three clicks and it would finally save [ three clicks offered me a way to change permissions, but it did not work for me].


Yesterday, I was attempting again to resolve this. Suggestion was to go to c:\users\username click on properties / security and 'enable inheritance ' When I did this, it turned out I had 5 users. I tried with two of the names. I got message that it had not worked and would cause inconsistencies. I tried going back, with one and going forward on the other other [there was a link from one person, who said, just click on the warnings and it would resolve]

Then I went to bed.


Today when I started my computer, instead of just starting without a password, It had my name, but required a password. Then it showed me three names, plus guest1. The three were three of five users listed above. ‘Local_hollis-Admin’ would allow me to boot without a password. As would guest.


But the screen looked different. I looked for drive image and realized the only one which had a Win 10 image was dead. Then I did Belarc and found out I was back to Win 8.1. When I used Nirsoft to find product ID for my win 10, I did get the product ID. But I am stuck in Win 8.1.



Does anyone have any idea of how to fix this?

I would like to know what I did that caused the problem, but am more interested in fixing the issue. I am now used to Win10.

 

[Grizzly]

Well, if you upgraded during the free period, your computer is recognized on MS servers. That means you do not have to revert to Windows 8.1 to make a clean install. Unfortunately that does not apply to your office package, so it may be lost unless you can somehow recover the key for it. If you do a clean install, just skip the serial# and finish the install. At the end your PC will be activated with Windows 10 HOME. At least it should work that way.....

 

[Hollis Jackson]

Thanks. Re; Office, I do have the disk and key.
I will try it tomorrow, I guess.

 

[Grizzly]

I would recommend to back up anything of your files that you still want to keep. After that you can delete the whole drive and start over with a fresh Windows 10 install (I hope you have made a installation medium like Flashdrive or DVD??)