Windows 8.1 and Recovery

Because most of us received our Windows 8.1 by a direct download from Mighty Microsoft, rather than as an ISO which we could then turn into a DVD for the actual installation, we're stuck with no hard media for use in recovering or repairing this operating system. Your Windows 8 DVD will show 'Invalid' if you try using that, even though your Key Codes from it are the same ones used for the upgrade to 8.1. 

So you need to create a USB Recovery Drive, but first, you need a partition on your hard-drive for Recovery, and this page displayed above explains how to create the Recovery Partition (folder) which you need before you can successfully create a USB Recovery Drive. Seems a bit involved, doesn't it? It would have been a hell of a lot simpler if we'd been given an ISO download from which to make a DVD, but that might have been too convenient.

And how did a nice old guy like me get into this in the first place? I was trying to refresh this installation hopefully to fix a problem but it said "Some files are missing. Insert your disk...." or words to that effect, and of course we don't have one, because Microsoft didn't like that method. So we have to do all this...
and then hope it works. Doesn't your new Windows just make you feel warm all over?