Setup Installation :: Performing Clean Install Upgrade On Windows 8 Dell Laptop
Sep 15, 2014
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?
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Jan 11, 2014
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.
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Jan 15, 2014
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?
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Mar 21, 2014
I have bought a Dell Inspiron 15R which arrived this week. I have already decided that I am going to install my own copy of Windows 8.1 Professional on to my system.
I have tried this several times now and I keep failing. I am booting from my DVD and the install goes fine. However during install I am normally prompted to enter my Serial for 8.1 and it does not do this. It progresses as though everything is ok, I can format the Hard drive and then it proceeds to install Windows 8.1.
Once fully installed I then go to see if it is activated and to my surprise it is. It has activated with the same Serial as the OEM that came with the laptop.
I have also noticed that this copy of 8.1 cannot join the laptop to my own domain (the options to do this are greyed out) which I am also wanting to do. So this copy of 8.1 is not the copy I am trying to install.
How can I install my own copy of 8.1. I think this is something to do with Dells bios configuration but not sure where to start.
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Sep 13, 2013
Let's say someone wants to make clean install of windows, which method is cleaner? I tried reset PC briefly, it worked fairly well but I didn't really test it thoroughly...Will Reset PC preserve for example installed features, like WMC Add On, .NET Framework; and activation; or anything else?
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Nov 20, 2013
I bought my wife a new VAIO Sony laptop. It came with Windows 8 installed. She has been using a Toshiba laptop with Win7. She wants no part of Windows 8. (She is 84 years old) & spends a lot of time on her laptop.
I want to put Win7 on the Sony VAIO. I don't want to save anything on it. I want to make a Clean install by reformatting the HD. However, I know you can not completely reformat the HD because of the "System Reserved" partition. How to do a factory reformat?
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Dec 9, 2012
I installed W8 successfully about a month ago and all went well. The only recent change I have made is to install Startmenu8 to get a more normal Windows look. Last weekend my computer screen went dark blue and the mouse seemed not to function. I changed batteries and rebooted. However all I got was my desktop with no task bar and no icons. The programmes showed up along the bottom but would not open maximised so I couldn't use them. I have run the diagnostics on F12 at start up. All was ok according to that. I wanted to restore to a previous point so I managed to boot from my CD drive with the recovery disk (W8 version) but it said that both my restore point and image wouldn't work. I therefore tried to do a clean install of W8 but that wouldn't work. It just hung after several hours. I tried the same with W7 but with the same result.
My machine came with Vista so I installed that from the Dell recovery disk. This worked. I then tried to upgrade to W7 SP1 (an upgrade which would never install back in the day) from a CD I downloaded off the Windows website. That went on all night with the machine interminably rebooting. Still hung this morning. So I reinstalled Vista as above (clean) and tried to install W7 from the original upgrade CD. This hung also. The reason I haven't gone straight to W8 is that I think I have an image from a few months ago before I upgraded to 8.
I've just started restoring from a reasonably W7 image in Vista. Cross fingers but it seems to be working. However, I wanted to do a clean install and wonder why neither W7 nor 8 would complete.
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Jan 20, 2013
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?
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Jul 28, 2014
OEM keys pre-installed in the my laptop as i too want to clean install windows 8.1 also my os was windows 8 Single Language and i have a 8.1 Pro ISO
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Mar 1, 2013
I tried to install Windows 8 Pro on my Dell PC, but I didnt know the clean install was the best way to go and now my computer will not boot to the OS. It boots then goes black.
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May 6, 2014
How windows 8 works now without the sticker key on new laptops. I've searched all over the internet and all I can find are dumb articles telling users to use the manufacturers recovery image. How to do a CLEAN install of Windows 8.
My new windows 8 has NO sticker key on the bottom so my understanding is that it's stored on the bios? Is this correct? So my question is, is if I get an ISO of windows 8 and install it, will it automatically recognize the key or is the key only set up to be recognized by the PC manufacturers crapware filled image?
ALSO, if thats the case, can I use a 3rd party product to pull my key and then use that with the clean ISO? Lastly, where can I download a clean ISO of windows 8? I know you can download official windows 7 ISO's, but i cannot seem to find an official windows 8 iso. I have no desire to download a torrent or from some shady website, I just want an official ISO.
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Jan 27, 2014
Until very recently i was running Windows 8 with a 240 GB Sandisk SSD as a primary and a 2 TB Western Digital Green HDD as a storage. I decided to set up a RAID 1 setup so i purchased a second 2 TB HDD and installed it.
My intent was to run windows 8 off the 240 SSD as a primary and have a RAID 1 setup for my 2TB HDDs.
I learnt that my data configuration was set to AHCI. I decided to do a complete clean install and change the sata configuration in BIOS to RAID.
After successfully creating a RAID volume using my 2TB HDDs i proceeded to install Windows off my primary. I am however having difficulties in that it will not allow me to install windows on either drive.
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Feb 12, 2013
I have made a clean install of Windows 8 using USB and UEFI. Somehow it seems the instalaltion is not quit right of what I have read... Have attached picture of the Diskmanagement (OS is Norwegian by the way).
Compared to this thread: UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with for me something is missing/wrong.
I have a laptop with one SSD and two internal disks. Both internal disk were removed before the installation, and connected and formatted after finished the installation.
It can me mentioned that I downloaded the OS, saved it as .iso file, then copied onto the USB disk. Then connected into the laptop and booted from USB/UEFI.
I did not follow these steps: UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows
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Dec 31, 2013
I bought an acer 756-2808 netbook last year with windows 7 from Amazon. This netbook came with a "upgrade to Windows 8. SoI did the upgrade when it was released.
Sadly, I probably only used netbook for a month or two because the LED screen cracked. They are pretty fragile.
Then, I upgraded to 8GB ram. This thing flies!
I downloaded 'produkey' from nirisoft.net, because I can't find the product key anywhere for the life of me.
So, now I have the product key for the current windows 8 installed. Will this upgrade product key work for a clean install? Moving on, I ordered a Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB which should be arriving in a few days.
Finally, I want to do a clean install of Windows 8.1 using a Windows 8 Product key. Is this possible? The original HDD on this netbook has nothing on it, so I don't really have to back anything up either (like I said I barely used it for two months before the screen cracked!)
I did some searches and found this link: [URL] .....
So if the above step is correct.
Do I:
1.) Get the ISO on the USB following the steps mentioned in the link above.
2.) Take out old HDD and install new SSD
3.) Reboot computer with USB
4.) ?
5.) ?
6.) ?
etc.
Are these steps incorrect?
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Dec 2, 2013
I built up a new PC featuring a brand new SSD (i.e fully unallocated). Then, I made a clean install of Windows 8.1 pro (64bits) using an ISO DVD. Using Windows disk management tool after the install, I can see that only two partitions have been created: one System partition in NTFS (350MB) and the remaining of the SSD is the C: partition while I was expecting a third one : a recovery partition. Of course, I do not remember a prompt during the install to ask whether I want a recovery parttion or not.
Is it normal ? Is a recovery partition useful knowing I have the install DVD ? If the recovery partition has some advantages, is there a way to create it after the install is completed ?
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May 17, 2014
I have upgraded my system from windows 7 to windows 8 through digital delivery (no dvd). later it was upgraded to 8.1 pro now its in 8.1 pro with media center. Now i want to do a clean install of windows 8.1 pro with media center but i have no media, i have only windows 8 purchase product key and current product id.
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Jun 19, 2014
So my windows 8.1 installation became corrupted, so I backed up data and did a clean install after deleting all partitions.
After the install on the first boot, right after the process of "installing apps", it showed an error message saying an error occurred causing windows to restart, and created a memory.dmp file.
I just want to make sure this installation is stable before continuing to update to 8.1, especially after my previous issues. There are also some errors in the event log that I don't understand.
The errors came after install of Windows 8, as that was the key I had.
Windows failed to download and install 92 updates with error code 80248007
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Jan 27, 2013
I upgraded to Windows 8 from XP via unlock key without CD, forgetting that it'd be 32bit too.. I'm making a rebuild soon and I think 64bit would really benefit me, apart from some programs I use that are being discontinued in 32bit. A friend of mine recently upgraded to Win 8 too, but he bought the CD. Could I use his CD to overwrite my Win 8 32bit with a 64bit one? And another question: if I could (and I hope I can) is there an option during install to leave some free space for Linux? Having Windows 8 only is not safe ..
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Feb 16, 2013
After BIOS page passes, it loads for 10 seconds and crashes. Error screen disappears too quickly so can't take note. This is a new laptop.
Have tried 64 bit Windows 8 ISO and from Flashdisk.
LENOVO IdeaPad V480 161
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Jul 11, 2014
I recently bought a new SSHD for my laptop and after initial problems with trying to install Windows in UEFI, I turned to Legacy and that worked. But now when I change it to UEFI, it just comes up as "Operating system not found".
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Dec 5, 2013
I have recently purchased Windows 8 Pro Upgrade and for Christmas I will be getting my first SSD.
I want to do a clean install of 8.1 via USB, is this possible with the Windows 8 Pro Upgrade key? I have read through numerous tutorials and think I've got it right but just want some to clarify this will work.
Download the 8.1 ISO
Use the generic key to run the installer
Setup the PC
Open PC Settings
Change Product Key enter Win 8 Pro (upgrade) key and activate
Do I then need to do the reg edit and command prompt changes? Regedit - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE Command prompt - slmgr /rearm Do I have this right or am I missing something?
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Sep 15, 2014
Ive just done a clean installation of Windows 8. I checked device manager straight away. There was a listing under Other Devices with an exclamation mark listed only as "Media". Ive never seen that before so I havent a clue what it referred to. When I clicked on its properties it said Internal High Definition Audi Bus. Was this a serious issue..maybe a corrupted installation?
I wasn't sure what to do but because I had installed from Windows CD and not factory image I had to go to the Dell site and then install the Intel Chipset software. I then rebooted. The Media icon and exclamation error then disappeared from Device Manager.
Was it the Reboot of my PC that got rid of it or was it the Intel Chipset software being installed that sorted it out? Also what is "Media" referring to or is it just a generic term? Also, Im always confused as to what is the difference between an exclamation mark and the blue question mark on a white background in Device Manager which Ive seen before too?
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Jul 24, 2014
I am trying to install Windows 8.1 onto a new PC a clean install. I boot from UEFI CD/DVD Drive with the windows 8.1 install disk in it and it gets to the "Press any key to continue" screen, I press a key and it just restarts my computer. Then I try to boot from just regular CD/DVD Drive it says Missing BootMGR.
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Jan 28, 2013
Right now I have an asus h61-le-CSM motherboard with EFI; it's a little older with a i3 2120 processor. On Friday I'm upgrading to a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H with a i7 processor.
Right now, I have windows 8 installed. I believe I purchased the upgrade version, although the receipt from microsoft in my e-mail has no mention of the word upgrade, it just says Windows 8 Pro. I am going to want to do a clean install with this stuff which I am capable of doing, however I don't know what I need to do to keep Windows. Will I be ok just re-entering my key?
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Dec 19, 2013
I have a PC with Win 7 32 bit installed and I want to install a clean Win 8 Pro 64 bit on the machine. Do I have to do a complete reformat before I a can load the Win 8 or will it just do an install of the new operating system?
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Jan 6, 2013
Is there a way I can go from windows 8 to windows 8 pro without doing a clean install?
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May 2, 2014
I purchased a Lenovo Y510P laptop over a month ago which came with Windows 8.0. and I hated it from the get go. I was aware that 8.1 was available as a free download so I downloaded and installed it. All of these updates seem to have bogged down my system. When I click on what I am assuming is the new start button (the white house icon in the taskbar) it takes 6-10 seconds for the menu to appear .
I dug out the key with Belarc advisor and went to MS's site to download an ISO of 8.1 but it told me that it would not let me download the 8.1 ISO since my key was for 8.0. If I were able to get my hands on a 8.1 disc would I be able to use my 8.0 key to do a clean install of 8.1? It is so disappointing to have purchased such a powerful laptop and have it bogged down by so many updates as well as all of the bloatware that came preinstalled on it.
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Jan 19, 2014
I got Windows 8 from Uni as a free download for every student. Today I updated to 8.1 hoping to be able to a clean install as my PC is getting a bit clogged. Is there a way that I can do a clean install with out having a disc or the original download of 8 (have the download for 8.1 obviously) I don't have the key still either can I get it through the system?
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Jul 30, 2014
I have a Windows 8.1 Update 1 ISO and would like to use it to perform a clean install on a system which supports UEFI Secure Boot but has no optical drive. What would be the best way to approach this?
WIMBoot would be nice to have as well, if there's a way to do it without making things too complicated.
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Sep 15, 2014
Last year I built a new computer (ASUS Z87-Pro), andinstalled Windows 8 Pro 64 bit with an OEM DVD purchased online. Then upgraded to 8.1 Pro via the MicrosoftStore, and later purchased and installed Windows Media Center. The original Win 8 installation was done inlegacy BIOS mode instead of UEFI. I nowwant to do a clean install in UEFI mode. I of course have the original Win 8 Pro product key, and also haveextracted the current product key from the registry using one of the manydownloadable tools. Neither the currentor original key is embedded in the BIOS.
I would like to avoid reinstalling the original Win 8 Pro,and upgrading through the store. What Iwould really like to do is download Win 8.1 Pro Update 1 64 bit iso fromsomewhere, and burn it to a DVD. Canthis be done with the product keys I have, and what would be the product keyand activation steps?
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Jul 26, 2013
As the title states, every time I have gone through the install I still end up with old windows files and an option to boot Win 8 or "older version" I have deleted all partitions on the drive and selected the format option (twice now) but each time the Windows 8 install completes I am presented with this option. This is using a full version Windows 8 disc, not an upgrade.
How can I get past this or get a completely clean install? The old version isn't even complete - it's actually from an aborted install start-up from XP that was inadvertently run as I swapped drives and tried to fix and issue on the machine. Otherwise this disc isn;t even an OS disc, it was used for storing music files as a second drive
I also tried a reformat with Ubuntu and format from the repair option out of the Win 8 setup (I had previously done so from the install option - deleting all partitions, formating, then installing). The disk looked clean but as soon as I boot, it launches back into the XP setup or if I boot from the Win 8 disc and install Windows 8, still ends up with the dual OS option. I don't understand how a repartitioned/reformatted disk is retaining these Windows setup/system files.
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