I’ve had a lot of trouble reinstalling Windows on similar devices, the worst of which was a 2-in-1 tablet laptop, RCA brand sold at Walmart. I forget the model exactly, but they sold new under $200, maybe even under $100 on sale. I couldn’t find the vendor who assembled them, but I think it was a W101 V or V2, originally shipping with Windows 8/8.1. Whenever I tried to clean install Windows 10, I could get everything to work but the touchscreen driver.
I wish I still had that driver to see why it wouldn’t install, but I’m not sorry I don’t have the tablet, as it was a end user repair job. I tried DoubleDriver[0] to save my Windows 8 driver config, but it wouldn’t work under restore on Windows 10. I tried Snappy Driver Installer Origin[1], and none of the drivers in my driver db worked. I even tried DriverStoreExplorer[2] to manually install from the .cabs and .infs. No luck.
I suspect it had OEM offsets, registry keys, or other customizations which are applied at install time. I eventually had to use the OEM factory reset through the Shift + Restart menu to reinstall Windows 8, then in-place upgrade to Windows 10.
It really makes me wonder what the market forces and actors are doing, such that a poorly integrated, barely functional underpowered laptop, with nonstandard hardware and software, can be sold in big box stores. I suspect that price conscious customers with basic needs get the majority of these, closely followed by gifts for kids or other family/friends.
I usually have great success with these tools, but certain hardware tends to have vendor/integrater modifications to the OEM driver. I didn’t have time to dig into the reasons why in this specific case, but the OEM didn’t even provide a driver/installer for this model for the touchscreen. I know that for some people losing a touchscreen may not be a big deal, but as I was doing the repair as a service, I wanted total restoration of original OEM state, ideally without any unnecessary bloat. Can’t win them all, I guess.
I eventually got there, and it was the long way I knew would work, but it wasn’t the Windows 10 clean install I had hoped for the end user. They were more than happy with the repair and so I choose to be happy with the outcome also, if not with the hoops I had to jump through, which ended up being for naught. All’s well that ends well.
I dealt with a bunch of these types of issues at my previous workplace. They used cheap consumer Windows tablets for point-of-sale kiosks.
Trying to maintain a single deployable Windows 10 image for these devices was a real pain and it often was the touchscreen drivers that gave issues. Drivers with the same device/driver IDs but different settings if I remember correctly (it's been awhile since I was involved in this stuff). Touchscreen orientation and calibration was also a nuisance between models, which is where I suspect some of the driver customizations done by the OEMs are needed.
I think the market forces are just getting something as cheap as possible to market that satisfies the bare minimum. It's assumed that you won't be fresh installing anything onto them. I found a lot of hardware in this class was okay as a single-purpose device where you'd only ever be running one application at a time (though barely so if what you're running is a web browser).
Of course you’re right; low cost is the main selling point of these classes of computers, secondary to basic functionality beyond booting to desktop.
It almost feels like the low end tech is just a grab bag of cheap spare parts to keep the assembly lines hot between higher profit margin product runs. But most of these weird third party PCs aren’t made by well-known OEMs, so what is really going on here? How do these smaller OEMs make money?
I wish I still had that driver to see why it wouldn’t install, but I’m not sorry I don’t have the tablet, as it was a end user repair job. I tried DoubleDriver[0] to save my Windows 8 driver config, but it wouldn’t work under restore on Windows 10. I tried Snappy Driver Installer Origin[1], and none of the drivers in my driver db worked. I even tried DriverStoreExplorer[2] to manually install from the .cabs and .infs. No luck.
I suspect it had OEM offsets, registry keys, or other customizations which are applied at install time. I eventually had to use the OEM factory reset through the Shift + Restart menu to reinstall Windows 8, then in-place upgrade to Windows 10.
It really makes me wonder what the market forces and actors are doing, such that a poorly integrated, barely functional underpowered laptop, with nonstandard hardware and software, can be sold in big box stores. I suspect that price conscious customers with basic needs get the majority of these, closely followed by gifts for kids or other family/friends.
I usually have great success with these tools, but certain hardware tends to have vendor/integrater modifications to the OEM driver. I didn’t have time to dig into the reasons why in this specific case, but the OEM didn’t even provide a driver/installer for this model for the touchscreen. I know that for some people losing a touchscreen may not be a big deal, but as I was doing the repair as a service, I wanted total restoration of original OEM state, ideally without any unnecessary bloat. Can’t win them all, I guess.
I eventually got there, and it was the long way I knew would work, but it wasn’t the Windows 10 clean install I had hoped for the end user. They were more than happy with the repair and so I choose to be happy with the outcome also, if not with the hoops I had to jump through, which ended up being for naught. All’s well that ends well.
[0] http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm
[1] https://www.snappy-driver-installer.org
[2] https://github.com/lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer