Cannot install W10 onto a Laptop

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

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A friend asked me to plop Win 10 onto his Laptop yesterday.

He has no Broadband, and so I told him sure...

The Laptop is a cheap and nasty Asus Celeron Windows 8.1 with Bing but at least its 64Bit.

Anyway, I fully installed all updates, and I manually made sure that they were all done, and they are now.

I have downloaded the full proper ISOs from MS and so I chucked the 64Bit one into a Virtual DVD with Virtual Clone Drive ( This is the way I have done it on ALL of mine - bar the Linx Tablet - so it works very well. )

It stopped at the ENTER SERIAL part...

AH?

Ok, I ran a coupel of tools that grab the Serieal from the BIOS and sure enough, the serials matched and so I used that serial, but it said the serial was not compatible?

Hmmm....

Why is this? Is this Laptop using a version of Windows that does NOT upgrade to Windows 10?

The small white Windows logo is NOT appearing in the Taskbar like it may do, and I cannot install it withotu a compatible key?

What can I do, or shall I just accept that its not going to happen on this?
 
You don't need to insert the product key as far as I am aware. You should be installing it as an upgrade. It wont ask for a key or, if it does, skip that bit.
 
Thats just it.

It does not give me ANY options at all.

I start the installer, it asks if I want to download any stuff to help the install... I have chosen to do this a few times and to NOT do this also, in the vain hope of any changes, but after that, the next screen asks for the serial number, and I can either enter that serial to continue, or cancel.
There is no skip, or enter it later or anything?, \nd the serial I have entered, is the serial number from this Laptop's BIOS.

I am aware that 8.1 With Bing should indeed upgrade and I have doen it a few times on other laptops, but this one simply wont play ball at all.

My mate needs it for the weekend, and so he has it back, but I have said to him, that I want to try it again, but this time, I will do a fresh install... I will do it with one of my own HDs for now, juist in case I end up wiping his disk only to find out the serial wont work on a fresh install, or if it just goes in normally, or indeed, if we plop in another O/S and upgrade that way... Naughty naughty like... Or, I might just phone MS and ask whats the deal perhaps, but its certainly got me annoyed thats for sure.
 
Sounds like a good idea. Do a clean install of the original OS and then try to upgrade. Just to check, under system the OS is definitely activated right?
 
I had this too.

A company Lenovo. I did a fresh install of Win 8.1 Pro, activated fine using the uefi key. Upon trying to upgrade to Win 10 it needs a key, no option to skip this for later activation; it wants a key full stop.

Since it's a work laptop, I really don't give too much of a toss but I'd like to know of a solution :)
 
You need to upgrade from within W8.1 first to activate W10 as an upgrade, only then you can use keyfinder software and take note of the key, then use this key for a clean install.
 
andy_mk3 said:
You need to upgrade from within W8.1 first to activate W10 as an upgrade, only then you can use keyfinder software and take note of the key, then use this key for a clean install.
Click to expand...

Which is what you don't need to do after upgrading to windows 10 since activation is based on hardware and serial numbers and if it's been activated through an upgrade then it'll activate without having to enter a product key.
 
demonix said:
Which is what you don't need to do after upgrading to windows 10 since activation is based on hardware and serial numbers and if it's been activated through an upgrade then it'll activate without having to enter a product key.
Click to expand...

This. Once Windows 10 has been activated successfully on a computer it will reactivate without a key being required on the next install so long as enough parts are not changed in between.
 
So there's no way to upgrade using the ISO?

I know some people with really poor broadband speed, and the amount of devices eligible for free upgrade makes downloading the installation on each device daft.
 
Bane said:
So there's no way to upgrade using the ISO?

I know some people with really poor broadband speed, and the amount of devices eligible for free upgrade makes downloading the installation on each device daft.
Click to expand...

Run the ISO within Windows instead of booting from it.

As you are upgrading then you must be in Windows already before running the setup. After that you can boot from and clean install if you want. :)
 
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