Is that right? Is there a shortcut to all this procedure? I think the product key of Windows 8 is encrypted in the BIOS or something but I can't find the Windows 8 Home x 64 bit ISO anywhere. After hours of trying every alternative option, my laptop was completely DESTROYED and the only real option to get my laptop doing anything at all was to format it and install Linux from a live CD.įrom what I understand I can't install Windows 10 from the ISO DVD any more, but I need to find the original Windows 8 ISO, install that, then upgrade to Windows 10 and hope it doesn't destroy everything again for no reason. It would immediately throw me on a blue screen showing hard drive errors.

When I noticed that, it had already been a few hours of me trying all logical solutions and it had created 8 recovery partitions and my drive must have run out of space because it would no longer even start. I then saw that every time it tried a recovery it created a new partition on my drive called 'Recovery partition'.

I tried resetting a few times (cleaning all settings and apps) but that also failed. From there I tried all the obvious choices, to restart a few times, to restore to an earlier image which it couldn't find, to boot to safe mode which didn't work, etc. At first after the initial installation, Windows 10 was working well and I spent some time downloading apps, checking out Edge and talking to Cortana but then I hibernated and the next day I tried turning my laptop on and for no reason whatsoever it threw me to the 'Automatic repair' menu and then got stuck in a repair boot loop. I tried upgrading to Windows 10 and I had a few installation errors but on the 6th try it worked because I chose not to keep my settings and apps. I have a DELL Inspiron laptop (17R 5737) which was originally running Windows 8 (and later 8.1) with all updates installed.

Windows 10 has ruined my laptop