Installing Blender on Windows 10

I've been having trouble installing and using Blender on Windows 10. I've had various issues with 2.78a, 2.78b and 2.78c. The issues might have happened on earlier versions but I hadn't updated for a long while.

Just to be clear. Once Blender is working, it's working well.

It appears to install but when I try to run it for the first time I just get the black console screen.

With 2.78a and 2.78b I got an error message, not a very enlightening message but the Internet search pointed me in the direction of graphics drivers and updating them fixed the problem.

I installed version 2.78c in April 2017. Lots of Windows updated had happened since the last installs. This time I just got a black screen with no error messages. It did not even appear to to try to load or to create the user preferences.

This time, the first thing I tried was to turn on Developer mode.

I'd had issues with other installs where, despite it's name, Developer Mode needed to be enabled for the app to be able to setup its preferences correctly, or at all.

After selecting Developer Mode, it is necessary to reboot the machine, or at least it was in my case.

After that Blender ran as it should.