Undo Windows 10 Upgrade ?

[bmtara]

My PC came with Windows 8.  I downloaded and started to install Windows 10, and now I can't boot past the HP logo.  Can I undo what I've done?  I tried to go to a recovery, but it only allows me to select Windows 10 as the operating system for recovery and simply stalls on the HP screen again.

[old_geekster]

@bmtara, welcome to the forum.

You can go back if you have the Recovery media that you should have made when you bought the computer.  This will return the computer back to its original configuration.  If you didn't make the Recovery media, you can order it from HP.

Please click the Thumbs up + button if I have helped you and click Accept as Solution if your problem is solved.

[WAWood]

bmtara

The Win10 Upgrade is know, in some cases, to corrupt the Recovery partition stored there by the OEM that built the original machine. This pretty much guarantees that no HP Recovery is going to work: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Video-Display-and-Touch/HP-Recovery-Manager-Blocked-After-Windo...

This means that RESET no longer works on your PC due to your doing the Win10 Upgrade.

To actually restore your PC to its original condition, you need the HP Recovery Media.

[bmtara · Accepted solution]

Thank you both for your response.

I solved my problem based on advice from a few other threads and websites.

With not being able to boot up Windows, and without having the option of the previous OS, Windows 8, in the system reset functionality, I did the following:

Through the command prompt I navigated to notepad, which allowed me to navigate the hard drive and back up all files and programs I wanted to save to a flash drive.

Then I ran the following commands in the command prompt:
bootrec /fixMBR
Bootrec /fixBoot
Bootrec /rebuildBCD

I won't pretend to know what any of that means, but it somehow fixed my Pc rather quickly, setting it back to Windows 8 and presumably the factory settings, where I was then able to restore all my files and programs saved to the flash drive.

Just putting this all down to close out the thread and maybe help someone that runs into similar problems.

[old_geekster]

Thank you for the update on your problem and how you solved it, @bmtara.