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Thanks all for answering! That was really informative about why the ISOs are not available and unfortunately I am not able to wait till Feb 1 to see if MS provides any more. It also appears that the two options Alex5723 suggested are “no gos” for me since FIDO is available for Win8 and above and Ave Yo’s Media Creation Tool Win10.

I also found out that the Win8.1 upgrade (bootable and recovery disks) I got along with my Fujitsu notebook which I opted for a “factory-downgrade” to Win7 aren’t worth much as they don’t come with a MS product key. They said I would have to purchase one from MS.

Sooo, at this point, I am wondering about just reinstalling the Windows 7 OS on both my Win7 machines via their recovery partitions and (hopefully) using WSUS Offline to update per Canadian Tech’s Group W scheme to limit the updates. I guess this wouldn’t be considered as a clean install since I suppose all the original crapware, etc would get re-installed which might be the reason I have never seen anyone on this website discussing this option. (I do see there are some 3rd party tools to remove (most?) of the “c***”.)

If anyone wants to let me know what they think of using the recovery partition, I am all ears.

Also I do have one additional question that I would love to get some direction on and that is about having to provide any drivers or driver updates during the re-installation process. I’m just a newbie at all this stuff and therefore don’t even know if all the previous drivers will be wiped out when the C: drive is re-formatted. I know some are re-installed by some of the updates but those are all not recommended. Will the re-install actually work (finish completing) without me providing at least some of the required drivers at some mid-way point or can it (really) wait till after all the updates are done? Yes, I do know how to download them from the PC’s manufacture’s website and install them manually (or at least I just researched how to do it and it seems doable for me)

Thanks so much for all your support!

Craig L.
1) Win7 -> Win8.1 Pro, 64bit, Group B
2) Win7 Home, 64bit -> Group W
(hoping to reinstall each)

Ok thanks PKCano. I was thinking I could get those non-photo avatars from Gravatar’s website. Silly me!

Craig L.
1) Win7 -> Win8.1 Pro, 64bit, Group B
2) Win7 Home, 64bit -> Group W
(hoping to reinstall each)

Hoping someone can help guide me through obtaining a non-photo avatar. I went to the Gravatar website and managed to sign up/register but saw no “easy” way to obtain/ assign an avatar. I can see what appears to be an easy way to upload a photo from my computer but that’s not what I want to do. Just want some sort of carton character like some others. And now when I go to their website, I don’t even see the option to “create your own avatar” which I do recall seeing previously but that I believe lead me to some real technical page which talked about having to do some “hashing” and to me, something like having to use machine language!

If this is too much to ask, please don’t even respond. I would really rather get technical help on reinstalling my OS and with being able to install the correct updates. Besides I think I did figure out how to add a “signature” which I hope shows up below after I hit submit.

Craig L.
1) Win7 -> Win8.1 Pro, 64bit, Group B
2) Win7 Home, 64bit -> Group W
(hoping to reinstall each)