Problems in t' household

Phage

Phage

Phage

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OK. Stepson #2 deciding that he couldn't wait, without at least taking the system image first, has upgraded his laptop (Asus X552CL) to W10.

The bad news is, that he has forced it by doing a clean install over his 8.1 OEM and now (quelle surprise) it won't activate.

Symptoms of the Patient

  1. W10 says it is not Activated, otherwise works fine.
  2. Whilst there is a Windows.old directory there is no rollback option in Windows 10.
  3. The recovery partition appears to be borked, becuase when I boot from the ASUS recovery option (F9) I am unable to reset as the PC says the partition no longer exists, despite disk manager saying it's there and healthy (450Mb)

As far as I can see there are two options;

Somehow do a clean install of 8.1, upgrade, and then activate.

I did try this initially by using nirsoft to get the OEM 8.1 key, booting from my 8.1 DVD and trying to install. This failed, as the install software refused to recognise the OEM key I had extracted via nirsoft.
I suspect that I may have to try and convince someone in MS to activate his OEM key over the phone ? Not sure if that will work....

Convince MS to activate his W10 over the phone with a new key.

Not sure that this is doable at all. Might be my last shot before having to buy a license.

Am I missing anything ?

Thanks
 
Was the 8.1 on the laptop the same version as your CD, eg both 64 bit and both Pro?

When you put 8.1 back on the laptop can you skip the request for the key or use a placeholder key.

Is there no COA sticker on the laptop somewhere or with the paperwork supplied with it that has the product key on?
 
Hmmmm

1) I think so. Mine was 8.1 HP 64-bit. Can't imagine that his laptop would be running 32 bit ? 6Gb RAM surely means 64-bit ?

2) No - when I boot from the DVD, the first screen says 'Install', the second screen says 'input key' and has a single button 'Next'. No option to skip.

3) He's lost the paperwork, although I still have the original invoice (Thank you Gmail !)
The sticker on the bottom just says W8. No key. Although there may be one on the inside of the battery compartment. I'll take a look.

I'm not expecting it to be different from the one I extracted with the Nirsoft App. though, which failed with my DVD. Would my 8.1 key be recorded on that DVD preventing an install ? Or are all iso's the same ?
 
If he fresh installed 10 over 8.1 I assume you mean he formatted the partition so how are you getting the 8.1 key?

Incase you do have differing versions you'll need to find out perhaps from the retailer which version of Windows it shipped with.

From memory the original installs of 8.1 won't let install with a Windows 8 key.
This was fixed in a subsequent update to the installer. So grab the latest 8.1 ISO from Microsoft and try that rather than your DVD.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media
 
@Jamie - I don't know. Nirsoft reports it as BIOS OEM. I assume from the Recovery Partition ?

Aha - That sounds like a plan. I'll try that.

@thenewoc - No, it's greyed out. :(
 
I thought once you had the right version installed it picked up the key from the bios for an oem install automatically.
 
Phage said:
@Jamie - I don't know. Nirsoft reports it as BIOS OEM. I assume from the Recovery Partition ?

Aha - That sounds like a plan. I'll try that.

@thenewoc - No, it's greyed out. :(
Click to expand...

a lot of OEM gave up with the sticker method and instead the key is saved in the BIOS. so that should be the valid OEM key.

You just need to get the right version of Windows for that key lol.
 
thenewoc said:
I thought once you had the right version installed it picked up the key from the bios for an oem install automatically.
Click to expand...

It should do. but I'm pretty sure 8.1 will need to be activated first. Otherwise Windows 10 would treat it like a non activated install.
But I can't say I've done it this way or know anyone that's had this problem yet.

well....aside from OP!
 
JAMIE_CORTEZ said:
It should do. but I'm pretty sure 8.1 will need to be activated first. Otherwise Windows 10 would treat it like a non activated install.
But I can't say I've done it this way or know anyone that's had this problem yet.

well....aside from OP!
Click to expand...

I was referring to getting 8.1 activated first. Once that's done, upgrading to 10 should be relatively straight forward.
 
Aye. I'm fairly sure that the Laptop came with 8.1 HP 64-bit.

The problem started becuase he got the 'something happened' error when he tried to update. Rather than take my advice, like taking a system image or waiting for Asus to iron out the bugs, he just did a clean install over the top.

As a clean install, the 8.1 OEM key will not activate the W10. I'm just hoping he hasn't borked the 8.1 license as well as his laptop.

You should see his hard disk ! It now has like 6 partitions, most of which are empty. Although the recovery section is there, I just can't get it to work ! :(
 
thenewoc said:
I was referring to getting 8.1 activated first. Once that's done, upgrading to 10 should be relatively straight forward.
Click to expand...

Yes. I'll try the download method with a new iso first. After that, it's a few hours on the phone with MS I think.
 
Phage said:
Aye. I'm fairly sure that the Laptop came with 8.1 HP 64-bit.

The problem started becuase he got the 'something happened' error when he tried to update. Rather than take my advice, like taking a system image or waiting for Asus to iron out the bugs, he just did a clean install over the top.

As a clean install, the 8.1 OEM key will not activate the W10. I'm just hoping he hasn't borked the 8.1 license as well as his laptop.

You should see his hard disk ! It now has like 6 partitions, most of which are empty. Although the recovery section is there, I just can't get it to work ! :(
Click to expand...

Windows 10 upgrade activation is handled somewhat differently, you don't use the CD Key, because you don't get one during install you can skip the CD key step.
It activates because your prior OS was an activated copy.

Might want to merge up some of those partitions lol
 
Burning a DVD now. sigh.
Yes - Providing the OEM key wqorks, I'll do a complete nuke and reformat of his C: drive with the iso 8.1. He can download his own drivers after that
 
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