Microsoft pretty much abandoned 8.1 for Windows 10 in 2015, IIRC. Indeed, for at least a year after 8.1 shipped and maybe two years after--can't recall--Windows 10 was *free* as an upgrade to 8.1, and Microsoft made it very clear that 8.1 was a dead end--hence the free upgrade period for Win10. I took advantage of it, secured my retail license for Win10--I had purchased a retail license from Microsoft for 8/.1 for $30 direct in 2013--so my current Win10 license carries me for life--my life--not the hardware's. Of course, anyone who bought an OEM license with his hardware knew that the license dies with the motherboard. I've changed motherboards and CPUs--not to mention GPUs--three times since and each time Microsoft has renewed my license for Win10 with no hassle at all.

What "vital data" would you lose, I wonder? I'm not aware of any program made for Win7 or Win8/.1 that is incompatible with Win10--not even my fairly large library of games, some of them 30 years old. It's too bad you didn't take advantage of the free offer from Microsoft--it was real. If anything the latest version of Win10 is more backwards compatible than either Win7 or Win8/.1, in my experience.

What GPU do you have? Does AMD offer a Vulkan driver for your GPU? If so, what happens with the Win7 driver? You might try it at least. Advice is to dump 8/.1 ASAP. It will become nothing except more prohibitive to you from now on. It's not going to get better.

Despite the misinformation contained in this thread, updating your retail license of Win10 when you install a new motherboard is easy, simple, and takes 5-10 minutes of your day. I should know--I've done it three times already....;)

But more than anything else, imo, 8./1 was an aborted mess that I was happy enough to see usurped by Win10--which I've been using exclusively since Oct. 2015--the year before that, I dual booted between 8./1 and Win10, before I removed 8./1 altogether. Never looked back. Never had a reason to.

So you have vital data on your HD with no means of backing it up? Just pray that the HD doesn't die on you - jeez!

I was about to send you my old GTX 970 until I read you got a laptop :(

Anyway, that sucks. Nvidia drivers still support Win8 at least.

You could try to install the Windows 7 drivers.
I have a win 8.1 PC, and installed Beyond 2.11 just to try. The game do not started, saying the vulkan version was too old, but the installed AMD drivers was the lastest for Win 8.1.
So I downoaded the drivers for win 7. I choosed a not too recent version, the April 2019 one. Adrenalin 2019 Edition. 19.4.1.

I installed the win 7 drivers over the old win 8.1 ones, without even unistall them first. It worked without a glitch.
No Man's Sky start and run, seems OK. I have to test for stability, but so far so good.

Good luck.

I just tried it with the new update and it runs again on 8.1.


I firmly blame AMD for all this.