Windows 8.1 recovery. Hard system reset? Factory reset? OS reset help.

[Littlefield68]

Hello, My name is Scott. Recently duped into thinking I could upgrade my machine (running Windows 8.1 64 bit) to Windows 10. It will not allow me past the pw screen. 100% correct pw. and it will not accept anything, even pw reset. Tried restoring to previous state. Says file corruption and chkdsk /f. No can do. Any help out there? Chkdsk /f says NTFS corrupt. I should have known better. But I fell for it, Please help

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Does the F11 factory reset work?

If not, you can make your own W8.1 installation media and clean install W8.1.

Download the W8.1 64 bit ISO file from the link below.

Download Windows 8.1 Disc Image (ISO File) (microsoft.com)

Use the free Rufus utility to transfer the ISO file to a USB flash drive so that it is bootable.

Set up Rufus as you see it in the illustration.

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

Boot from the USB flash drive and if you need to recover files, when you get to the part of the installation that asks 'Where do you want to install Windows,' let it install over the existing Windows partition and it will create a Windows.old folder.

After W8.1 has completed installing, you can explore the Windows.old folder, find your old user profile and copy and paste the user folders from the old profile to your new one.

You can install the drivers and available software from your PC's support page.

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