HarryTri

Do you use an administrator account on both Windows installations?

That's suspicious - is Microsoft unable to notice it or they just want the upgrade to Windows 10 and pretend that they don't notice it? I bet for the second. In general I agree with Microsoft's reaction against piracy but it seems that "telemetry" counts more for them now.

Free Download Manager can download videos from many sites (you must activate the "Download it" button in the options), perhaps it can download this video too.

From Windows 8 (I don't have Windows 10, there must be some differences): Open Mail program> Make the Charms appear and click the "Settings" one> Click on Accounts> Click on an account. In this way a menu of choices opens which on the bottom has the option "Delete all accounts". If you manage to find the accounts on Windows 10 and click on one of them there may be a similar option.

I have the program and I think that you are wrong. You can restore to a different partition (of the appropriate size of course) or a different disc. If you want to restore via CD/USB use the Windows PE ones, the Linux ones have really rather limited capabilities.

SFC on Windows XP does exactly the job you want. Just put your Windows XP CD in the drive and run "sfc /scannow" in the command prompt.

Windows XP always needed post-installation activation by internet or by phone. There is nothing new to it.

Windows Defender is supposed to be updated by the Windows Update service, perhaps this is relevant.

Yet these services may be needed for disk backup software and the same.

I won't quarrel with you, Noel, but this I don't understand: You mean you can't run them with a restricted account (personally I can)?

Of course there is always the option to have two user accounts, an administrator one to do the relevant stuff (installing programs etc.) and a restricted one for internet access. A good AV program doesn't hurt either.

Personally I still install all the offered updates for Windows 8 x64, I won't go insane for the sake of Microsoft, yet I stay away from Windows 10. It seems to be the larger virus of the "Trojan horse" type...

I updated two times from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, reverted back to Windows 8 both times and I just think that it doesn't really worth the fuss.

If you are legal I don't see why should you bother about this.

Macrium Reflect can make incremental backups but you must by the paid version.

In your position I would have just reinstalled the OS already, I don't think that you have any other option since nothing seems to work.

You may want to check the Macrium Reflect Free v6 with the ability of making differential (not yet incremental but it is something too) backups and all the other features mentioned.

Maybe you should try redoing the image restore? (I also use Macrium Reflect Free, it's very good).

As far as I know/remember Windows always asked the user before overwriting a file and personally I am happy for that.

If you want to do the job with a freeware program then Macrium Reflect Free does it very well.

It's the 64-bit thing. You can only use it if you find an application which makes it possible for 16-bit applications to run in a 64-bit environment.

In fact the recovery partition contains a single .wim file which is divided to .swm files on the USB stick because it has a FAT32 file system (the 4 GB limit). I too investigated the possibility of transferring the recovery partition to a USB stick and I have three things to say: 1. The recovery partition is supposed to be used by an OEM recovery program (e.g. Lenovo One Key Recovery). 2. The OEM program may in fact not be able to use the recovery partition from the USB stick due to inherent limitations (the mentioned one is an example of this). 3. Even if you can't use the OEM recovery program (for whatever reason) you can use dism to do the job as cdob wrote.

Well, I (really!) got in love with Windows XP the first time I saw their default desktop and start menu.

What about the new multiple desktops feature?

Since they are offered I install them. They increase security and are - usually - harmless.