Windows 8.1 Recovery on Upgraded Windows 10 Laptop

Problem

Windows 10 would boot to a black screen and the only application that would run was sticky keys. I had tried using the disk based recovery located on the recovery partition, and also the recovery USB stick that the manufacture says to create and use. As a last resort I aslo tried the Windows 10 ISO bootable USB stick. After a lot of mucking around and almost giving up completely becuase trying to fix it was causing more problems and making the system less usable. I finally spoke to Acer Support where they informed me that the computer originally came with Windwos 8.1. My mistake was in trying to refresh and reset using Windows 10 install media when I should be using same version of Windows the computer came with.

Solution

Armed with the knowledge of original operating system Windows 8.1 I downloaded the ISO from the Microsoft website, then created a bootable USB stick with Rufus. I didn't want to overwrite the existing partions especially since one of the them contained the disk to disk recovery parition. I then plugged my newly created bootable USB stick with Windows 8.1 on it into the problematic laptop, booted from it then selected the partition where non functioning Windows was installed. This overwrote the existing install of windows and kept the partition intact. Once the process was complete the Windows deskop was now working normally, no more black screen. I need to check that disk to disk recovery partition still (push to recover).