I want to return to 8.1 - but Windows 10 won't let me - HP Stream 7

I have installed Windows 10 on my HP Stream 7 a few times now (and reverted to 8.1 a few times too!) but when HP recently released some Windows 10-specific drivers for the Stream 7, I decided to give it another go.

However, I am not happy with how Windows 10 shows blurry text in so many applications/dialogs/MMCs etc, and also how TINY the text is in some ModernUI apps - I have tried everything to fix these issues and have the same font settings as on Windows 8.1 (125%) but nothing changes. So I want to go back to 8.1 and today I clicked on the button to do so. But was told this:



Basically telling me that the files needed for Windows 8.1 restore have been deleted - except I haven't deleted them. There is still a Windows.old folder on the C: drive and I deliberately didn't remove the files in the eventuality of restoring 8.1.

So what are my options? Is there anything I can do to fix this restore option so it will revert to 8.1? My Stream 7 came with no recovery drive, and although there is a recovery partition, when I try and use it, it doesn't work (I think installing 10 made it redundant)

Any information on any of the above would be very much appreciated.

Cheers

Sorry, but you're most likely going to have to do a factory restore from HP Recovery Media. That's a set of DVDs and CD that can be used to restore your PC to its original factory settings. The linked thread from the HP Support blog has more details:

Thanks for the reply Mark.

What I forgot to mention is that back in June before 10 was even released, I used the built in Windows Imaging tool on 8.1 to create an image of my tablet's drives (all partitions including recovery) on an external USB hard disk.

The problem I have is when I go to boot into the mode where you can "Restore a system image", it only offers me the chance to restore from the network. Well I can't even access the network in that mode, so I can't hook it up to my laptop and restore via the network that way, and also, it doesn't offer the opportunity to restore from the directory on my external USB 3.0 hard disk.

How would I go about restoring the image I made?

Thanks

How would I go about restoring the image I made?

Sorry -- one of the reasons I don't used the built-in tools is problems like the one you're having. I use MR and with that, I can access backups stored locally, on external drives, or on networked drives.

Hopefully, someone will come along who DOES use the built-in tools and give you some aid.

Just to revisit here and confirm that I was able to restore my Windows image backup from my 500GB external drive in the end.

The problem was, I have my external drive very organised! The "WindowsImageBackup" folder that I had buried in my folder structure needs to be in the root of the drive. Once it was, the Windows System Image recovery tool picked it up.

Just to revisit here and confirm that I was able to restore my Windows image backup from my 500GB external drive in the end..

Good to see you got it restored.