[Mashiro]

Question 1:

Don't use those installation disks! They are usually or almost always heavily outdated. Basically those disks are out of date the first day Windows gets some updates (usually the monthly patchday - 2nd Tuesday of the month). You can use the key to activate your Windows 8.1 installation later on though.

Get yourself a fresh ISO from Microsoft. That said even the ISO from Microsoft might be out of date and miss many updates because it hasn't been updated in a long time. As far as I know the last big ISO update for Windows 8.1 was when Windows 8.1 Update 2 was released (dubbed Blue or something like that). That was long ago. Getting it up to date might take some time but will work because Microsoft changed the way they release updates from several different update packages to a compilation of updates coming in a single update. So you might need one certain update and from that one it will download the latest.


Question 2:

Backup everything you need. Documents, pictures, bookmarks, application settings, installation files and so on!

I would suggest to delete all partitions and start fresh. When you have deleted the partitions you can create new one and there you can specify the size. When you create the new partitions there will be a point at which a popup will automatically appear and asking to create the necessary reserved space (which is a bit bigger than with Windows 7). There you click yes and it will create the partition automatically. After that you select on which partition you want to install Windows on.

Should the second partition be missing in Windows 8.1 after installation or have a different drive letter you can always fix it easily in Windows disk management. There you can create partitions, delete them, resize them and change drive letters, too. Windows automatically gets the C drive letter by the way. D is the next free drive letter but during installation that might be taken up by something like maybe your disk drive or the USB thumb drive you use to install Windows. That is why the second partition might have a different drive letter.

- https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-dis...nt-2626080
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows...management
- http://www.mustbegeek.com/creating-parti...n-windows/

Many more resources and guides available for free on Google.


If no part of the OS is on the D partition then you can actually keep it. You would only delete the reserved space partition and the old partition with Windows. Out of that free space you would create a new partition for Windows 8.1 which you would select for installation.

Make sure to have backups, always!


The size of the partitions is up to you. It depends a lot on how many programs you are going to have installed and have much personal data you have. Looks like you have a 500 GB drive in your computer. Not much for nowadays considered once can get a 512 GB SSD for quite a good price (would make your computer fly like a jet probably). Maybe take notes how much space is taken up now on your partitions and rethink the size when you create new partitions. You can always use the Windows disk management to shrink a partition to free up space to extend another partition by that free space.


Question 3:

The Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) in Windows 8.1 in my opinion is not worse than the one in Windows 7. It is pretty much the same but just in the Windows 8.1 style with newer elements that now live on in Windows 10, too. Anyway.

You can't really replace it though. You have to live with it. What I do is that I pin the Explorer icon to the taskbar. This way it is literally only one click away and you no longer have to search for it or look for the icon somewhere.




You can replace the start menu with one that looks similar to Windows 7 or Windows 10. The software for that is called Windows Classi Shell but there are also others available such as "StartIsBack".

Windows Classic Shell: http://www.classicshell.net/
StartIsBack: http://www.startisback.com/