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