Windows 8 to Windows 7?

Just because you can not handle it, do not blame the OS for your incompetence. It is highly likely your machine can only display in vga mode under bios. And if you have to keep reinstalling your OS you obviouslt know nothing about computers.

Windows 8 is superior to 7 in almost every way. It sounds more like user error.

>So I looked up that holding "shift" while clicking restart would bring me to where I needed to go - and it is a halfassed boot menu where, no matter what option I choose

you obviously cant even handle googling things. if you looked up "how to boot safe mode windows 8" you would have your answer in about 5 seconds... there are like 12 different boot options. (these are ONLY options on different ways to boot the windows os you already have installed)

if you are trying to boot of a dvd, or a usb device, you cant do that from inside windows (or any operating for that matter) and were never able to before. You have to choose your boot device BEFORE you boot into an operating system. Once windows loads, you can no longer boot from something else w/o restarting.

So enter your UEFI/BIOS (when you start your pc it will say something like press F2 for setup or press del to enter uefi or w/e. all motherboard are different on what they say and what button they use). change your boot order to put the dvd drive or usb device higher on the list then your hdd where windows is installed. (if you dont want to change boot order for some reason, you can just boot to the specific device from the bios).

This is the same process in windows 7,8,10, linux etc.So you had to do this any time you wanted to reinstall (unless it was already set up to have dvd drive at the top of boot list in which then it would boot from hdd, but that has nothing to do with windows).

The display goes dead likely because your monitor is connected to the wrong video output. (if you are using a dedicated gpu, make sure its connected to the gpu output at the bottom and not the motherboard more near the top. also if using a dedicated gpu, its a good idea to just disable the integrated graphics in your UEFI/bios, as that way it wont cause issues such as this, which it may try to use your integrated gpu instead of your dedicated gpu, and thus give you no video output). You seem to lack basic troubleshooting skills if you were unable to solve this problem. as no video displayed is a pretty simple fix, since there is a very limited number of things it can be and its a simple process of elimination.

you are going to kill yourself because you cant install windows? my god... you are another kind of special... i guess its the same logic you used to say windows 8 sucks because you cant figure out how to work your motherboard UEFI to change the boot order to boot from another device.

unfortunately this level of cognition is considered "average" :/

It isn't the OS, it is UEFI (replacement for BIOS)

just download and install "Classic Shell" it makes Win 8 look just like Win 7. works great.

Installing Windows7 requires a Windows7 install CD - not a restore CD. Next you need to set your BIOS' boot order so it boots from the CD/DVD drive - not the hard drive.

I don't think you have to format the hard drive first, but I seem to recall that the boot manager that comes with Windows 8 doesn't like Windows 7 very much. Deleting all the partitions on the hard drive will nuke the boot manager. It will also make the hard drive unbootable, so you'll have to boot from the install CD.

Install from scratch.