Windows 8 gives “system thread exception not handled” after update-Collection of common programming errors

While the update path between Windows 7 and Windows 8 is ideally smooth, I’ve personally found that there can be unexpected driver issues that pop up all over the place. As a personal recommendation, I suggest backing up your data, formatting the drive and then a clean install.

Depending on your installation media (CD/DVD or USB), the path you take to install Windows 8 will be slightly different.

If you have the ISO file from Microsoft (or have the DVD and want to create an ISO file), About.com has an excellent tutorial that you can follow. They use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to mount the ISO on a flash drive.

For a clean install tutorial, the same author has another guide.