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so evil w10 still installs junk w/o permission.

[publius911]

My windows 8.0 Lenovo desktop was transformed into a brick back in January, 2016 after upgrading to 8.1 in October 2015, and then accepting the invitation to upgrade to Windows10 Free in February of 2016...

Turns out that Microsoft developed a database of different manufacturers/models that are permanently incompatible with the Windows 10 upgrade (free or otherwise) I was not aware of this database, so I never checked.

Have you looked into that as your possible problem?