Well, I threw in the towel . . . .

DeaconFrost said:

So you were running the pre-installed version all this time? That's a minor miracle, as they usually contain outdated drivers and enough pre-installed software to make a high-end computer run like crap.

First rule of buying an OEM computer....perform a clean install with the latest drivers and only install software you want or need.

Yes, that's what I've had to do. Good advice.

Any idea why Windows doesn't read my CDROM drive without a forced scan?

Buckaroo said:

I was gonna do that too. But I couldn't stand the constant harping to do the upgrade. It's been about three months now and so far no problems. Not all that much different from 7. I want to do a clean install of 10 but I guess I'm just too lazy.

Same here. Broke down on Jan 2 and switched. Bad move! I'm at the 50/50 point of going back to Windows 8.1. At least I had come to grips there with what would run and what would not. I have found only 1 or 2 useful things in Windows 10 and neither of them are deal breakers. This week, an older app (that worked fine from Jan 2 until this week and had worked fine in Compatibility mode in Windows 8.1) suddenly stopped working properly. It will open once but the processes do not close when I am done.

I wonder if I can go back to 8.1 then reconsider 10 in July?

If you have an external HDD, download and install Macrium Reflect from download.com (C|Net). Make your boot disk, so that you can boot form it using your specific drivers, and make a backup to the HDD. Always have a restore point, and if the internal HDD fails, you have that to go back to.