Setup Installation :: Install Windows 8.1 Upgrade (not OEM) On New Computer
May 17, 2014
I installed Windows 8 Pro on my now defunct computer way back when it was first released by downloading the files and saving them to hard disk before upgrading from Windows 7 Pro. I then upgraded to 8.1 and now 8.1 Upgrade, but that computer crashed badly. I have removed the hard discs and disposed of the computer. I am in the process of buying a new computer and want to install Windows 8.1 upgrade onto it, on a Solid State Drive. I can copy or clone the original "C" drive from the defunct computer onto the SSD, but, of course, none of the other specs would be the same. (I am taking advantage of the disaster to upgrade my specification. - A better CPU, and a better motherboard with more SATA and USB3 connections and, above all, a greater memory capacity of 8MB RAM, - the defunct computer only had SATA and USB2 connections with only 3MB Ram). Will a clone of the "C" drive work to give me Windows 8.1 upgrade on the new computer? If not, how can I transfer the licence from the defunct computer (I cannot get into it now, although I can get into the "C" Hard Drive)? I have the original download of Windows 8 from Microsoft available on the hard drive, although I do not think in a bootable format, just as a file on the harddrive. I can, however, install Windows 7 as I have my Windows 7 CD. how I can transfer my licence and install Windows 8.1 Pro Upgrade
I was wondering if it's possible to take windows 7 from my first computer and install it to my new one that has windows 8 on it (windows 8 has problems with its wifi where windows 7 worked perfectly).
I currently have Windows 7 installed on my HDD and I have a Windows 8 Upgrade key. I bought a brand new SSD that I wish to install Windows 8. Am I correct in understanding that the SSD requires an existing OS on it before it can install the Win 8 Upgrade properly? I have tried installing the Upgrade on it alone but the installation hangs at 87% of "preparing files for installation".
If I am required to install Windows 7 onto the SSD first, am I able to install it as a dummy so that I can go through with the Win 8 Upgrade without it affecting my Windows 7 activation on the HDD? I plan to format my HDD to use as a secondary drive at a later date but not right now.
I got the Win 8 pro upgrade and since I am getting a nice refund for taxes I am buying an new motherboard cpu and ram.
What I would like to know is am I still going to be able to use the Upgrade on the new hardware? I can install win 7 first then do an upgrade if need be. Will I have to do something with the activation or what?
I am unsure of what is going to be required of me. Am I still legal with the upgrade install or will I have to buy an oem or retail?
I read about how to upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit with clean install. I have a 32bit win7 on my desktop and a 64 bit Windows 8.1 on my laptop.
My question is can I use the Windows 8.1 laptop do download the upgrade assistant and get Windows 8 64 bit? I don't want to screw up my laptop especially cause it has an OEM Windows 8 that how to reinstall in case of OS breakdown.
In case this is not possible, is there any way to get a 64 bit Windows 8 upgrade downloaded without another 64 bit os already installed?
I have a Dell Inspiron 15R SE 7520 laptop that came with Windows 8 Core edition pre-installed. This laptop has never worked properly for some reason. It won't shutdown the normal way (it'll just stay on the shutdown screen forever) and it never comes back from sleep without a BSOD along with other troubles that haven't been solved by updating drivers,etc.
I decided I want to do a clean Windows 8.1 re-install and upgrade on my laptop to get rid of these problems, but it's been ages since I last did this (back in Win2K times, I used to dual boot Slackware Linux) and I've bee reading about all this UEFI, Secure Boot,etc and quite frankly it's making me quite nervous. I was even planning on taking this chance to dual boot some linux distro, but it looks sooo difficult. Things are much more complicated these days for the tinkerer!
I need to make sure I can get back to a running system quickly.
For starters, here is how the hard drive is partitioned: [URL] .... And this is the Diskpart output : [URL] ....
Why do I have 5 partitions? I understand the recovery partition, the OS partition and (after lots of reading) the ESP partition, but I'm not sure about the others. What do I need to keep? I've been reading around and I see some people recommend wiping the whole drive and starting from scratch. Is this a good ide?
I'll create the installation media from a windows 8.1 MSDN ISO using a USB drive. When I start the installation process it will ask me where I want to reinstall it to. Do I just choose the OS partition? Won't the recovery partition be based on a Windows 8 image and be useless from now on?
What's the best way I can get back to a fully working system in case I screw up somehow? I've made an image of my drive using Macrium Reflect free edition. But I read here that I cannot make an image of a GPT disk. Will this image I made work for getting back to a working system quickly in case I screw up?
As a last resort, I've made a Recovery USB using the Dell Backup and Recovery Method. In the extreme case that I screw up real bad, will this work to get back a factory-state system even if I've wiped my hard drive clean? I'm assuming this tool is for users recovering after a dead hard drive so it should work , right?
The windows 7 usb/dvd tool will not recongnize my flashdrive. I am trying to install windows 8 on my friends laptop but it will not work it says there is no compatible flashdrive in the computer.
This is the message it says : There is the flashdrive i using, there is the information about the flashdrive
Is it the flashdrive and how do I get it to work. I tired using a fat32 format on the flashdrive that did not work either.
I have a Dell Studio XPS 9000 running Windows 7 home premium 64bit and a USB 3 card installed. I want to upgrade it to Windows 8.1. I also have an HP laptop Envy dv6 running Windows 8.1 USB 3 compatible. I also have an Intel SSD 335 Series 240 GB, on which I want the upgrade to be installed, and a USB 3 NexStar caddy.
I imagine the most elegant approach would be to load Windows 8.1 on the SSD via the caddy connected to the HP laptop which is connected to the Internet, and then install the SSD into the Dell Studio XPS 9000.
Yesterday, I clean-installed Windows 8 Pro x86 on an old Dell Vostro 1400 laptop which had been running Windows 7 Ultimate, and it activated and ran fine, without even a single exclamation point in Device Manager. I applied the update necessary to make the Store offer 8.1 and proceeded to install it as I've done on a couple other machines. After downloading the thing, it errored out with:
Couldn't install Windows 8.1
Contact your PC manufacturer to see if you can upgrade the System BIOS
When I clicked the OK button, it then gave me the informative and grammar-challenged error box:
Something happened and the Windows 8.1 couldn't be installed. Please try again. Error code: 0xc1900104
Try again Cancel
Ever the optimist, I clicked Try again, and of course, it proceeded to download all over again from scratch, only to error out in the same way. I then downloaded all the Windows 8 updates, although just the one had been necessary on my other machines that successfully upgraded to 8.1, and tried again, only to get the same result.
Today, I've discovered the Windows 8.1 Compatibility Assistant, which avoids the lengthy download of the upgrade every time (Microsoft, maybe you should run it implicitly before downloading 3 GB of transient data), and it tells me:
This PC doesn't meet system requirements
Contact your PC manufacturer to see if you can upgrade the System BIOS
Obviously, no BIOS updates are available, and what exactly is the problem here with my BIOS. The obvious googling turned up nothing except some people with Sony Vaios that had the same problem, which was corrected with a BIOS update, and of course, there is no information on what their BIOS update does to make the 8.1 upgrade possible.
I just got a new laptop, a Lenovo X230, for which I paid extra to have the OS on it as Windows 8 Pro.
So--now I have it, and Win 8 Pro 64 is installed and activated on it. I am a legal owner of Win 8 Pro.
However, I would like to do a clean install of Win 8 on the computer, to have it free of bloatware, etc. (In fact, I would like to set up a multi-boot with Win 7, and perhaps even triple boot with Xp as well. (I have installation media and my product keys for XP and 7 though, so those are not really a problem.)
The computer came with no discs at all. There is a procedure to make recovery disks. I may do that, but I think those will be to restore the computer to how it came from the factory, and therefore not usable for a clean install.
I don't see my product key for Win 8 anywhere. Not on the computer, not on any kind of card that came with it, etc.
I looked at the tutorial here for clean install of Windows 8, but it requires an install disc and product key. I have neither, although I am a legal owner of Windows 8.
Is there a way I can create (from my installed Windows 8) a win 8 install disk, that can be used for a clean install? Or a link to download one? Is there a way I can get my product key?
I have windows 7 and bought windows 8 upgrade discs (still unopened), I have no SSD now but want to buy one. What should i Do install win 8 first then the SSD? Or the other way around? What's better What will my recovery options be if I get a nasty virus? Also once my ssd is in it can't fit everything so when i want to download things and programs to the old HDD that will be fine right i can still access them from the desktop.
I just got a new laptop, running Windows 8.1 SL. I wanted to connect it to the office Active Directory domain, just to find that it can't. Now I know I can go to Control Panel, to the "Add features to Windows 8.1", and purchase an 8.1 Pro key. But my company has a Windows 8.1 volume license key, and there are still a few available that I can use.
However, I already have everything set up pretty much the way I want it; I don't want to format and re-install Windows. I tried to do the Windows "Add features to Windows 8.1" ("Windows Anytime Upgrade" as it was called in Windows 7) using our Volume License key, but it doesn't want to accept the key.
So I was wondering if there is any way to do this upgrade without losing any data? For example, is there something I can do with slmgr? Or can I maybe just insert the 8.1 Pro disc and do an upgrade?
It looks like this PC can't run Windows 8.1. This might be because the Users or Program Files Folder is being redirected to another partition.
Using the guide (User Profiles - Relocate to another Partition or Disk), I had relocated my user profiles to D: Drive, when I installed my windows 8 Pro. I was able to go Windows Store to download 8.1 but I get the above error ...
Can I use the same guide and move back all user profiles, including local admin to C: Drive? and then upgrade to 8.1?
Upon upgrading, can I change again the user profiles to D: Drive?
Having previously upgraded to Windows 8 I restored the factory installation of Windows 7 prior to warranty repairs to my PC. Now that the repairs are satisfactorily completed what are my best options in upgrading again? On the one hand I could go ahead with the upgrade now or on the other should I wait until Microsoft have completed development of Windows 8.1?
I'm upgrading from Windows 8* After downloading 3 gig and then it installs automatically. THen it restart automatically and at 68% ("Getting Devices Ready: 68%" it crashed. Restarted it and it restored back to Windows 8..
An error code is:
0xC1900101, 0x30018
Don't want to download 3 gig again, where is the installation file saved?
I had a laptop running Windows XP. When Windows 8 came out, I downloaded Windows 8 Pro upgrade. I clean-installed it and also upgraded to WMC edition when Microsoft were giving this away for free.
Now that PC is kind of dying (it is about eight years old,) so I have bought myself a new one. The new one came running Windows 8 (not Pro, not WMC) OEM. I have no intention of ever using my old PC again, so my question is as follows:
How do I legally remove the Pro and WMC licences (and if required, Windows 8 itself) from the old PC and upgrade the new PC's Windows 8 to Pro WMC? I have a record of both the Pro and WMC product keys already. But how do I legally move them across to the new PC and upgrade the new PC's Windows 8 OEM to Pro WMC?
Currently, I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I want to upgrade to Windows 8 then I got an error when booting Windows 8 from USB. It say something like this:
"Your PC needs to be repaired ......... ......... Error code: 0xc0000001 .......
when the windows 8.1 upgrade came out I updated to it without any problems but a few weeks ago a driver update showed up in windows update thingy. I decided to update it but it went horribly wrong my screen went black and stayed black for a hour, that's when I decided to restart my computer after the logo I just got a black screen with a flashing mouse. I made a recovery stick with my sisters windows 8.1 laptop and renewed my windows to 8. I wanted to upgrade to windows 8.1 again but it didn't work after it rebooted it just went to windows 8 again and gave me an error message that said that it couldn't update to windows 8.1. I searched on Google for a few hour and what I got was that I need to update my video drivers. I tried the default drivers I got (v8.9) it didn't work I tried the newest beta one (v13.11) didn't work either. And because my laptop manufacturer is Toshiba i cant update to the latest release of catalyst control center so i have to use the old version of Toshiba or the beta version. Both didn't work BUT before the driver incident I successfully updated to windows 8.1 with v13.11 beta however now it doesn't want to work anymore.
I am interested in upgrading many computers to Windows 8.1 (from Windows 8). Ideally I would like to create an upgrade DVD, which is 'self running' and contains the required update files - Download Windows 8.1 Update for x64-based Systems (KB2919355) from Official Microsoft Download Center
According to Microsoft (previous link) it is necessary to download several update files, and install them in a particular order. I would like to do away with this tedious method...
Is there a way to upgrade my Windows 8 Enterprise desktop to Windows 8.1 Enterprise without losing my installed programs, files, settings, etc..?
From what I am reading online, Windows 8 Enterprise must be upgraded via iso to Windows 8.1 Enterprise. I read a few user saying there is no upgrade and you have to do a fresh install of Windwos 8.1 Enterprise. I do not want to lose my customizations, files, and programs.
I am trying to setup a new Windows 8 computer that is going to be a gift. I need to go through the setup procedure so I can install some software which is also part of the gift. How can I do this without having to use a Microsoft account, or at least with leaving the least amount of account remnants for the new user?
I am using Windows 8 pro, and recently it comes up with a big "Upgrade to Windows 8.1" banner at login, with a link to the store, and you can't close the banner either, so you have to go to the store.
Is there a way to disable this?
I've tried 8.1 and I don't want to move on yet until the 8.1 drivers are properly released for my laptop... had issues with 8.1 the last couple of time I tried it.
I have a Lenovo U310 Touch that came from the store with Windows 8.1 on it. I need to install Hyper-V and that requires 8.1 Pro.
I have a product key from my MSDN subscription for 8.1 Pro and attempted to use the "Add Features" program from the system screen to upgrade. It takes the code, validates it as ok, goes through some downloading and other stuff then reboots the system. When it comes back up after the reboot it states "Couldn't add features" along with a contact Microsoft Support link.
I looked around and can't find a log file or any error codes.
I've done this on 2 desktop machines to enable Hyper-V with no issues but for some reason this doesn't work on this "Ultrabook".
I've tried this on a hard network connection and on a wireless connection to see if anything changed. Still broke both ways.
The machine does have 2 drives in it, one 20GB SSD for recovery and recovery drivers and the primary drive. I've read where there may be files mapped on that drive that are causing problems, but have no clue how to actually find these and move them.
I have successfully upgraded 2 Windows 8 pro media centre PC's, a desk top and a netbook, but the 3rd, gets stuck in a continuous loop.
After initiating the upgrade from the store, the download bar slowly works its way up to 50%, the installation process starts, and as soon as it gets to "getting your PC ready" the download process starts again from scratch. This is a very common problem, but Microsoft are still silent on the issue.
It is bad enough that I have to download the file 3 times, rather than just download one ISO, but this one download has now happened at least a dozen times.
All Windows 8 updates had been done and I have cleared the Windows Store cache.
The setuperr file gives
MOUPG SetupMgr: Error reading Store SQM registry data. Data = [StoreSetupDownloadPause], HRESULT = [0x80070002] 2013-10-20 07:23:30, Error MOUPG
Since I want to update my windows 7 notebook (asus n55sf) to windows 8, I installed the windows 8 upgrade advisor. First, the compatibility of my programs was checked. Here no problems occured. However, when I moved on to the screen where I wanted to order windows 8, the programs hangs at the screen which is attached below. The language is dutch and it says something like "we are preparing some thinks, a moment please"
I waited for 3 hours and the program is still at this screen. I already redownloaded the utility and tried it again, but every time it hangs at this screen.
Recently, Microsoft included the Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM on their Dreamspark basic site. Currently, I'm running the R1 version on a virtual machine using VMware Player. How can I upgrade the R1 to R2 while keeping all of my files and settings using VMware?
Do I just boot from the ISO (I haven't downloaded it yet) (CD/DVD settings inside R1 VM) and then it will detect and upgrade R1 or I have no choice but to create another VM and then manually replicate my files and settings from R1 VM? I really don't want to do the latter since it's very time consuming.
I have upgraded to 8.1 and I discovered that some files in the C: folder have been deleted during the installation. Does it exist some way to recover those files?Are they in some backup folder?
I bought a legitimate copy of Windows 8 Pro Upgrade version about a month ago. While doing a clean install on my desktop computer, I found out that you cannot do a clean install from an upgrade version of Windows. I figured out how to do a clean install of Windows by following the steps on this website: [URL] .....
When I open the Windows Store App, I can't find the option that lets me update to Windows 8.1. Is there anyway I can legitimately update my copy of Windows to Windows 8.1?
I build my own desktop. I first had Windows Vista on it, which I bought on a DVD. I then skipped Windows 7 completely, but later upgraded to Windows 8 when Microsoft had a promotional period for it early in 2012 when it just came out.
Now I'm replacing the motherboard and also swapping the HDD to SSD, and I'm curious. Can I still install Windows 8 as an upgrade like I did before? And if yes, then how?