thanks. the 8.1 upgrade assistant says its compatible. however, i suspect they are confusing the processor board with the video driver. both are called ATI radeon Xpress 200. the motherboard will run 8.1. but the installer installs a generic video driver. the answerdesk said to talk to ati/adm and they stopped supporting the xpress 200 years ago. so for now i am going to stick to v8 until this pc dies.