So, I DID unplug all the HDDs except for the Windows Technical Preview Hard Disk, and then went on to update to 9879. I have a lot of the same niggling complaints like the num lock light not...

Nope, it wasn't a boot manager thing. I was choosing my boot drive using the motherboard bios, not a multi boot boot manager.

Disk manager saw the drive as EMPTY, not even partitioned or...

I use it on a TEST machine only. At first I thought it was safe enough to install it on a separate hard disk drive, and just select an operating system at boot up. Then 9879 misbehaved and trashed...

I installed 9879 and had problems. I am back to 9860. My computer is set up to have different operating systems installed on physically separate hard disk drives. With 9860 installed I could...