Upgrading to Windows 8.1 From Vista.

[Catholicity]

My old laptop bit the dust. I bought a new one. Its an older closed out Dell. Guess what the OS is? Windows 7, I hated 8 that badly. The computer itself has a smallish hard drive compared to what you can get now (250 gig) but everything else is great 4gig on the processer i5 core etc..... and it was dirt cheap. Can't sell it in store so it goes for 200 now on ebay

[Cerebrum123]

Trying it out. 8.1 seems less annoying than 8 by a small margin, but I much preferred Windows 7, and dare I say it, Vista.

[Bill the Cat]

You should consider classic shell. Will make your experience much more familiar.

http://www.classicshell.net/

[Cerebrum123]

After hours of being puulled to different people, we finally got to tech support. Windows 8.1 is now operational! oohoo:

Now to reinstall all my games and stuff.

[Cerebrum123]

Try using IMGBurn to burn onto DVD... I've had issues with Microsoft tools.

I'll tell my dad that, and we'll look into it tomorrow. Thanks!

[Cerebrum123]

Okay, didn't work. We are going to try and call Microsoft tomorrow, especially since the reason we are given by the download is that Vista and XP can't be upgraded. This is the opposite of what their own website says, and we followed their instructions to the letter so far. Only thing we haven't tried is booting from USB.

[Irate Canadian]

Try using IMGBurn to burn onto DVD... I've had issues with Microsoft tools.

[Cerebrum123]

Okay, I'm trying one last thing tonight, but I'm going to put this here anyway.

I bought what is apparently a downloadable version of 8.1, which according to everything I looked at should have worked with Vista, but I digress. Anyway, the download url will only work on Windows 7. We are currently trying to make our own bootable DVD using Microsoft's own "Create Media" tool. We've burned two discs now, and I set my BIOS to "Boot from disc" as the first thing it will do when booting up my computer. However, the disc has not been recognized yet.

If this doesn't work, are there any people here who might know what we are doing wrong? Oh, and no, we haven't used the product key we've been given yet, so it shouldn't be assigned to any specific computer. This is the Full Edition, and not a System Builder, so I don't know what the problem is right now. Is it possible the problem is we are using DVD R+?

Okay, I'll post here in the morning to let people know if what my dad suggested actually worked. It's apparently the last thing he can think of to try right now.

Sorry about the preemptive thread, but I'm tired, and I don't want to have to deal with writing this up in the morning.