Finding Windows 8 Product Key In BIOS On BSoD Computer
Aug 15, 2014
I have an acer aspire computer with corrupted key windows files. So i am unable to even boot windows. When i start windows i get a BSOD.
What i am trying to do is retrieve my product key from the BIOS with a program that is bootable outside of windows. Like from a USB for example.
My intention is to restore my computer with a clean install by downloading my windows 8 version on another computer to a usb through the windows website after i retreive my product key. Then use this usb to install my windows 8 version back onto the BSOD computer. But as i have stated, i am unable to use the conventional product key finding programs since i cant even boot windows 8.
Windows 8 moves to BIOS-based product keys Product keys for Windows 8 computers aren't printed on a sticker. They're encrypted in the BIOS. How might that affect you?
My question: is this possible..?? Can a OS write to BIOS..?
If it true you can NEVER switch to a other OS..!!! You need to buy a new PC...
Source: Windows 8 moves to BIOS-based product keys | Windows 8
If i decide that i want to uninstall windows 8 from my computer, can i then install it on another using the same product key that i used on the first or is it once used you cannot recover your product key?
I just bought a copy of Acronis True Image 2013 with Plus Pack. It appears that this is all I need as True Image will install the new motherboard drivers as part of the migration process. But do I stay with MBR or move to GPT?
Presently both Win7 (on a 120GB SSD drive) and Windows 8 (on a different 120GB SSD drive) are both MBR format. I don't want to start over from scratch. That's why I bought the Acronis 2013 with Plus Pack.
I uninstalled Intel Smart Connect Technology after experiencing a BSOD that seemed to be caused by a related driver. When the uninstallation tool asked if I wanted to restart now/later, I chose to restart now, which was followed by another BSOD.
Now I can boot into Windows just fine but neither my mouse or my keyboard are working. They work in the BIOS but as soon as Windows is loaded, they stop functioning. I've tried resetting my CMOS but this did not solve the problem. I've also checked that they are enabled in the BIOS.
I would try a system restore but Windows 8 doesn't seem to allow me to boot into repair mode without actually going into Windows first, but I can't do it from Windows because of my malfunctioning peripherals.
I can't use the Windows 8 installation disc to repair because as soon as the message that says "Press any key to continue" comes up, my keyboard stops working. However, it seems I can force the PC to boot from the CD which after a bit of a wait gets me to the Windows installation screen, with my only option being to completely reinstall Windows.
I am able to enter Windows Repair Mode with the Installation disc, but there is no option for Safe Mode and when I attempt to System Restore, I get this error message: "To use System Restore, you must specify which Windows installation to restore. Restart this computer, select an operating system, and then select System Restore."
trying to install a driver for my internet connetion, the installation goes just fine, but when at the end, where the drivers start installing, the PC gives me a BSOD no matter how I try regular installation, copying drivers files from a PC on which internet is working (this PC, working on Windows7). The full message is:
Driver_irql_not_less_or_equal (USBXHCI.SYS).
The specs of the other PC (notebook):
Asus X552L Nvidia Geforce 820m Intel core i5 4Gb RAM 2 3.0 USB ports OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
I've tried re-indexing, some of the XLS sheets are found, but not many, so I know the directories are included. Pretty sure it was all good on v8. I've switched the Bing search off, and if I let it search everywhere after a bit it gives up and says it's taking too long. It finds files based on the file name and seems to be fairly successful searching PDFs but XLS no good. I'm running Office 2003 so whether it's forgotten how to read old app stuff I don't know...
How I have my phone set up: Phone is Nokia Lumia 520 - ATT
I have 2 groups of contacts, which are 'family' and 'common contacts'. I pull all contacts from outlook online and facebook, in addition to the phone itself. So family and common contacts do not have all my contacts listed in them, because there are quite a few.
These contact 'boxes' tell me who has texted me in the past, by saying 'New Message', etc. Also, my lock screen tells me if I have missed texts, calls, etc.
Pic of Contacts box:
Pic of lock screen
I have more than 7 messages listed on the lock screen that I cannot find the source to. They aren't in my family or common contacts or it would display 'new message' in the green box, so they must be from someone else in my address book. Also, whenever someone who is not a family or common contact messages me, I get the message, but no notification except on the lock screen (which says how many new messages I have, but not who from).
I'm running Windows 8 at the moment and I am trying to get 8.1 installed.
I go into the Windows Store......and I get no option at all to download and install 8.1. Windows updates are on, not sure if that even matters though. Windows Store is just not giving me any option to install it, or even tell me that its available to download.
Now, I'm in the UK, but as I understood it, Microsoft's release of 8.1 was global. I have also done several reboots of the PC, no change.
How to have my ink levels show when I am printing. I am using the same printer, HP.. and they used to show up on XP. or even if I could find the level..period.. Ive looked under preferences under printers..can't find....
I just built a desktop with a sabertooth x79 motherboard, and am running Windows 8.1 pro 64-bit. When I click the UEFI BIOS Firmware live tile via the change PC settings>update and recovery>recovery>etc. my computer reboots normally to Windows and will not open BIOS. I have tried accessing it using the delete and f2 keys, but this does nothing either.
I am up to date in terms of my BIOS, and am definitely running UEFI and not legacy.
I recently re installed Windows 8 then upgraded to Windows 8.1 because I was having BSOD. Now on the fresh install, which is 4 days or so old, my computer BSOD on start up like before.
I've recently built a new computer with Windows 8.1 and have been having some BSOD issues. Initially, I was getting a "Kernel_Security_Check_Failure" BSOD about once every day or two. After running MemTest+ (and confirming my RAM was fine), I started reading around online and began thinking it was a driver issue.
At the time, I did have a Belkin Wireless USB adapter which did not have an official driver for Windows 8.1. I had gotten it to work by installing it in Win 7 compatibility mode. So to try and solve the problem, I uninstalled that driver and software, and went to hard-line ethernet. The BSOD's went away for about two days until:
Yesterday I had another crash. Except this time I didn't get a BSOD, but instead just a hard crash to black. When I rebooted I ran the Driver Verifier (after reading about it online), and then did a restart. When it booted back up, it started saying I had a "driver_verifier_detected_violation" BSOD appear, which was pointing to "nvlddmkm.sys". This looks like be some sort of Nvidia driver. I had to boot in safe mode to get back in and turn off driver verifier.
The crashes usually occur when the computer is not in use. I will move the mouse and either the screen will come to life... or the computer has crashed.
I updated NVIDEA drivers end of July and thought I fixed it. But apparently not.
About 2 - 3 weeks ago, I've got a lot of bluescreens, and I've solved it by removing my USB wireless adapter and connecting to my router by using an Ethernet cable, this reduced the amount of them, I think that I only got one after that. In the last sunday, my hard drive broke and bought a new one in monday, and after formatting it and reinstalling Windows 8, the bluescreens returned and now they're more than ever!!!! And one thing I have noticed, is that two of them appeared when I was copying big files which total size was about 60 GB from a directory to another inside the C: .
I'm starting to think that this is related to the motherboard or something like that.
Every few days my computer will BSOD when waking from sleep. The screen will display this message as the error "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL cmudaxp.sys". Also sometimes the system will crash during sleep but no mini dump will be created. I have looked at the minidumps that were created and the only thing its pointed to were the cmudaxp.sys driver, hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe. I tried reinstalling the 8.1.8.1822 drivers for the soundcard but that did not solve the problem. Today i reverted back to older drivers 8.0.8.1821 and will see if this fixes it. .dmp files included in attachment.
I have now tried several times to create a second user on my new build, and every time I get the BSOD about 10-15 seconds after signing in as the new user. I get the message BAD_POOL_CALLER or BAD_POOL_HEADER. I already tried uninstalling AVAST as I read it created issues for some people, but that didn't change anything. My system works perfectly as long as I am signed in under my own user account, but as soon as I try a different user, I get the BSOD. I attached the minidump files that were created during the multiple times I tried to log in as a new user.
Last night my laptop (lenovo z400 ideapad, running windows 8 - i never updated to 8.1) went to a blue screen with a "kernel data inpage error" message. Tried to boot it back up, but once i entered my password and logged in, the screen looked wrong. The windows homepage had no apps and the background pattern was not the one i normally had. I couldn't click on anything, so i shut it back down and went to sleep. This morning, i turned it back on, and this time it looked normal when i logged in. However, after about a minute, it froze and would not unfreeze. Thats where i am now. I can open the computer in safe mode and it works fine, and through that i can access the event viewer and command prompt, etc. I did a disc repair, no luck, and a system restore failed. Like i said, computer only works in safe mode, so i dont know if I'll be able to do the right procedure to upload the dump file from the BSOD, but i can try. Lots of interesting things in the event viewer. I'm on my phone but i can sample them later.
I took my computer to a computer repairs to get my fan fixed and when I got it back I found that my computer kept crashing when waking from sleep. It happens every time and is inconvenient as it just resets. It also takes longer to turn on, it has a black screen for a short amount of time, it was not like this before, I can put up with the added turning on time but I need to be able to sleep and wake my laptop without issues.
I recently built together a brand new computer but after installing windows 8.1, the computer keeps BSODing with different error messages all the time. I've been trying to install my battlefield 4 but during installation, it will assuredly BSOD. It also BSODs when im transferring a large amount of files from my usb external hdd. Even in the process of trying to collect the minidumps and zipping the folder, it would also BSOD. I have already tried reinstalling windows but it has no effect.
My internet explorer also keeps not responding and while installing other programs they also "not responding"
Edit: after posting this, I was trying to install chrome from the internet but everytime I tried it kept BSODing, total of three times with each different error names
A couple of weeks ago my old PSU blew up. It did kind of like a explosion sound and some flashing, very impressive. I inspected the motherboard and I could not find any damage whatsoever. Only the PSU seemed affected.
After that I bought a new PSU (Tacens MP700 - 700W), an aftermarket CPU fan (Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO) and some extra chasis fan to improve air flow and lower the temperature. I plugged everything in, and system started with no apparent issues.
However since a few days ago sometimes my PC restarts without saying anything, some other time it just freezes (very annoying) and some other times it gives me a BSOD with the errors CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT. The frequency of these failures:
- Normal use like browsing, email, programming --> not very often - Playing game like iRacing --> sometimes it freezes - Playing game like PES2014 --> it always freezes, sometimes during the first match, sometimes after a 2-3 of them
After googling it appears is a hardware problem so I wonder if the damn PSU damaged some of my other components. The thing is the original PSU was intended to be for a quiet HTPC but I started to work from home and suddenly became a work station. I should have improved the PSU among with the other components (CPU, memory, etc.) but I did not think it was necessary. Bad decission I guess.
I've monitored temperature and it does not seem to be the issue as using a benchmark software at 100% CPU during 30 minutes temperature does not go over 65C on the CPU (I live in Spain where ambient temperature is around 30) and motherboard never pass 68-70. Right now while browsing temp is 35 for the CPU, 45 for the mobo and graphic, 30 for HDD. Pretty normal I think.
I have also upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 hoping it was a driver issue but not success either.
Find attached the SF report. Added new crash info:
System errors: ============= Error: (07/30/2014 01:38:31 PM) (Source: Service Control Manager) (User: ) Description: The AODDriver4.2.0 service failed to start due to the following error: %%3
Error: (07/30/2014 01:36:11 PM) (Source: Service Control Manager) (User: ) Description: The AODDriver4.2.0 service failed to start due to the following error: %%3
I just got a BSOD. It happened while i was in a Skype call, listening to music, and about to go into match of League of Legends.
I've actually been getting quite a few of BSOD lately. The one I got before this one was
Kernel_Security_Check_Failure. Which I also got today.
I only seem to get BSOD when I have a sound card installed into my computer. I even bought a new sound card in hope to maybe fix this problem but I still get it. I've tried a few things too, I've even replaced my ram. I actually thought it was my AMD motherboard at first so I completly replaced my mother and cpu to a intel cpu and motherboard and still i get BSOD. The only thing I have not changed out has been my 2 Graphics cards and my SSD. But I didn't start getting BSOD till i either got my SSD or got more ram, I can't remember which. But like I said, I've already completely changed out my ram.
I have solved this issue by not leaving my laptop plugged into my television through HDMI while it restarts to install updates. If you run into this issue, make sure you try leaving all ports open on your computer.
A few weeks ago my PC ran into a Blue screen of death error. I'm not sure why or exactly when it happened, but I think it may have led to the issues I have now. About 3 weeks ago (I think) I was playing a game and the forced restart to install updates thing popped up. It said I had 15 minutes before my system would restart and install updates. I was a bit cranky at the time, so I got mad and decided to look up on the internet how to disable forced restarts for windows 8. I came across a thread on a site much like this that explained how to open your system registry and delete the forced restart file or something similar.
I opened my registry and couldn't find it, so I ended up not deleting anything, but I did keep my registry open on accident and my computer restarted while it was open. It crashed during the update install and gave me a BSOD error. I restarted my computer and it began installing updates yet again. It got to 30% and then went black. A few seconds later, the Asus logo popped up with the loading circle below it. It said attempting to repair or something similar to that. It eventually failed to repair, so it asked if I would like to proceed with a system restore. Seeing no other options, I clicked yes. The screen went black again and the Asus logo showed up with the loading circle below it. It failed to system restore and took me to a blue screen that isn't the BSOD. It said there were other options like refreshing my system, and it assured me that I would not lose my files (but it said nothing about apps).
I decided to do that over the manufacturer restore. It worked, but I lost all of my apps that I had installed. After redownloading and installing all the apps, I thought it would be over. About a week later another windows update popped up. I thought it would work fine this time, so I let it go. The same thing happened, and I ended up having to system refresh again. This happens every time my computer restarts, and it is very aggravating. I'm not sure what to do about it, although I haven't tried to manufacturer restore yet.
TL/DR; My computer has to system refresh every time it restarts, causing me to lose all of my apps and have to reinstall them each time. I think it has something to do with my computer restarting to install updates while my system registry was open.
I wasn't sure what to provide for specs, so I'll just add in the usual Ram and stuff:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz 2.40 GHz Installed memory (RAM): 8.00GB (7.89 GB usable) System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor Pen and Touch: Full Windows Touch Support with 10 Touch Points
I added the SF_19-11-2013.rar file to the post because I just saw the requirements >.>
CyberpowerPC AMD FX-Series 8GB DDR3 500GB HDD Capacity Desktop PC Windows 8.1 64-bit Gamer Ultra 2140
[URL]
This started happening around 4 days ago but, since then I have system restored to a previous point and yet the problem has persisted. It has recently dropped below freezing around where I live which is unusual; however, I am in a dorm and the temperature has remained constant. I haven't really downloaded anything harmful that I am aware of in the past few days either. I also hope I got the dump files thing sorted out correctly considering there is no BSOD.
I just put together a computer yesterday, and while most things seem to be working fine, I've been having some problems with YouTube and certain websites that have embedded ads with animation. The computer either freezes up completely or sends me to a BSOD that cites the problem as WHEA_uncorrectable_error. It happens almost every time within a few seconds of the video starting. It also froze once just sitting on the desktop with only a Steam download in the background, but I haven't seen that happen again.
Oddly enough, I've run several games on Steam to see if it would have the same effect, but I haven't run into that problem yet while playing games. Netflix and Hulu also seem to work fine.
Nothing is overclocked. I got drivers for the video card and mobo from the company websites, although I'll admit that I don't know much about that. My report from the diagnostic tool is attached. My build is posted below.
CPU: Intel Core i5 4590 Graphics Card: Radeon R9 280X (Sapphire) MOBO: Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H Power Supply: EVGA Supernova NEX750B (750 W) HD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB 7200 RPM SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8 GB OS: Windows 8.1, 64 Bit
My computer seems to continually go through a loop of BSOD over and over and there's nothing I can do about it it starts as soon as the computer is turned on.
I have a folder that contains a bunch of files that contain craft shows. If I want to search for a file that contains a specific show I'll open the folder then in the search field in the top right corner I'll type in "Christmas Carousel Craft Show". The problem is that every single file containing the word "christmas" or the word "carousel" or the word "craft" or the word "show" pops up! I just want to find the file with the phrase "Christmas Carousel Craft Show".
