[deanhills]

Thanks VERY much for the comprehensive guidelines @"Hidden Refuge".  By the time of your suggestion I'd already seen the lifewire tutorials.  It's a very good Website.

I'm really glad I'm doing the research first, but so far things have gone OK.  I went to the Microsoft Windows 8.1 download page - as recommended by most - but it's as you said.  Windows 8.1 is no longer fully supported from January 2020, and just generally
"limited" supported until October 2023.  So the download from the Microsoft Download Page for Windows 8.1 must be dated as well.  I got the Microsoft Windows 8.1 ISO download from here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software...indows8ISO

It's easy in Windows 7 to just right click over the ISO downloaded file and burn it to a DVD disk.  But for my own learning experience I also did an image for USB.  You probably already know this - but for Windows 7 the ability to load the ISO image to a USB stick is not as intuitive as for the DVD disk.  One has to download software from Microsoft for doing this first - Windows USB/DVD Download Tool.

Guess I'm ready now to start the Windows 8.1 test.