LITTLE bit of progress.... my wife's sister's boyfirend's friend had a copy of Release Candidate that he brought over so we could try. and wouldn't you know, that idiot thing boots right up. gimme a break. now i'm trying to upgrade RC to Win8. *fingers crossed*
 
Please keep us updated. I'm really curious if this works; if so, the only thing I can figure is you had a bad disk.
 
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so apparently the problem must HAVE been drivers. i'm an idiot. because i tried to upgrade new, and nothing. upgrade with only keeping settings, nothing. upgrade why keeping files, programs, and settings. it worked. so evidently it had to carry over the drivers i installed or something.... i dunno.

why else would it ONLY work if i upgrade and carry everything over? (which i did NOT want to do?) doesnt make sense. oh well. it is now working, and i hate microsoft.

and i apologize to anyone who had to witness me throwing a fit while the east coast got hit this weekend. my prayers are with the victims of the storm. thanks for the help guys.
 

in case you didnt catch it. i am now running the fully licensed official Windows 8 final release. and it is pretty intuitive and easy to use. all the grumblers just don't want to give up their windows 98 se look and feel