[DUG] Windows 10 issues

[John Bird]

So after 4-5 hours on technical support with HP downloading and trying various network & wifi drivers, I am no better off.   No Network, no wifi.

I also tried a USB wifi adaptor which I went out and brought to get around this conundrum (Netgear A6100).  This is also not recognised by the system after installing the driver for it.  "USB adaptor not found" is the message from the Netgear Genie software.

The rest of Windows 10 mainly works OK

HP answers have always been "you just need to reinstall the correct drivers"  and sent me to various routes of deleting drivers, let the startup reinstall them, or downloading different ones every time, of which none have made any difference.  (4,5,6x)

In theory I should be well covered as I have disk images for Drive C before upgrade, and after upgrade (*)

Best options so far look to be:

1 - Restore Windows 8.1 with disk imaging software.   Hit a problem with that - Windows 10 created an extra partition or two, so the C drive is now 903GB instead of 904GB and cannot restore the disk image unless I figure out which partition to restore - assuming I can resize C to fit where it was.

2 - Use Windows 10 inbuilt Recovery/Refresh option, which will remove all installed programs, keep personalised settings and reinstall Windows 10.

3 -  Revert to previous Windows 8.1 (this is an option - looks like it still deletes installed programs).   Don't know if it undoes the change in size for C drive partition.

Reading the scarce details that Microsoft supply about each option, it looks like number 2 - Reinstall Windows 10, might not only wipe the installed programs - I can live with that if it fixes the networking not working.   It may however also delete the previous version of Windows backup.   In other words I may get to try either option 2, or option 3, but only one of them?

Does anyone know?

Also - option 3 Revert to Windows 8.1 - does anyone know if it resizes disk partitions back to how they were for Windows 8.1?

Cannot get any answer from Googling, or Microsoft support on these simple questions (2 hours + on hold for technical support).   There is a good chance that they won't know anyway.

John 

P.S.

Practical tip - if you have to get out an old laptop to do Googling, and said laptop hasn't been used for 18 months, turn off Windows Updates before it starts downloading piles of updates.   Said laptop shut down to install updates, started up and blue screened, couldn't get into safe mode.   Fortunately I was able to resurrect the old laptop from its disk image backup.   So after a lot of creative and productive work, I am back now exactly where I was 5 days ago,  old laptop to do googling. New one with no networking,  and no clear safe and path what to try next.

P.P.S.
(*) "In Theory, theory and practice are the same.   In Practice they are different"  - Yogi Berra


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