Windows 8.1 Installation - How To Unlock Hard Drive
Aug 18, 2014
I have just tried to Refresh my Windows 8.1 installation, but when running the refresh Windows 8.1 came up with an error I have not seen before, let alone do the refresh.
It displayed a message saying "The Drive is Locked, you will have to unlock the drive to continue" so HOW do you unlock a Hard Drive?
How to do this before I either pull my hair out, or start from scratch and re-format the drive and do a complete new install of Windows 8.1
One thing I have done about a week ago which may be causing this problem is I converted the Drive from MBR to GPT and if this has locked the drive.
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Sep 26, 2013
How can I unlock my hard drive from my command prompt? If I can do it using it. Because I try the auto repair, refresh my pc leaving everything intact, but when I did that it told me that my driver is lock. How do I unlock it using the advance options that the Windows 8 cd brings?. It said something about boot bcd.
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Sep 15, 2014
I have a HP Envy 4 Ultrabook and I want to install Windows 8 from scratch, I put the installation files on a flash drive from a DVD of Win 8 I had, but when I go to install it, it says the "We couldn't find any drives". I have tried using DiskPart within the CMD as well, but it only finds my flash drive when I run list disk. Also, my drives are completely formatted, and I accidentally wiped the recovery partition. I tried with a USB of Win 8 Pro, and it was fine, showing all of my drives correctly, but that version is linked to another PC, so I can't install it. Also, I booted into a Linux Mint live CD and tried to install it, it sees my hard drive correctly, but the Windows install does not, I can't figure this out, never encountered it before. Is Linux my only option at this point?
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Aug 1, 2014
I have an Asus T300LA Transformer with Windows 8.1. My keyboard stopped working so wanted to use the recovery utility, but when I get there it says my hard drive is locked and to unlock it. How do I do that?
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Nov 28, 2012
I just bought a lenovo Z580 with windows 8 and I also have a new hard drive coming. The first thing I tried to do was create factory restore disks so that when the new hard drive gets here I can remove the old hard drive and replace it with the new one and put the pre-installed windows 8 that came with the laptop on it. I can't however find a way to create factory restore disks. Is this still possible and if not what are my options for replacing a hard drive for this laptop and using the same windows install that originally came with it? I would prefer to not have to clone the hard drive because the new hard drive is an SSD so I will want to install windows with AHCI mode on.
Ultimately, I want to do a clean install of windows 8 on the new laptop using the existing pre-installed windows 8 key. I imagine this would be pretty simple if I had windows 8 install discs but I don't have those either as they didn't come with the laptop. what my options are to make this work?
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Apr 16, 2014
I am currently using windows7 in a 1 tb harddrive. I have another internal harddrive that im not using that has windows 8 on it but is only 150gb. How do i bring windows 8 to the 1tb harddrive i am using to replace windows 7?
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Mar 24, 2013
Trying to unlock a flash drive which is in write protected mode in Windows 8. There is no protect switch on the side of the drive.
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Jul 18, 2014
I recently upgraded capacity of my hard drive (from 350GB to 500GB). I'm wondering how can I install my windows oem license from my previous hard drive to my new one. My laptop is Compaq Presario CQ58 and OS is Windows 8.
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Jun 18, 2013
I just bought a 1TB hard drive and want to install windows 8 on it (since I'm used to it already) I have the files for windows 8 on my computer ready to be put on the new hard drive, but thing is, how would I do it? would I just use a simple USB stick and plug it in? or would i have to burn the files on a disk?
Amazon.com: WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache - WD10EZEX: Computers & Accessories.
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Jan 9, 2013
I have a Windows 8 DVD(got it from a tech seminar in our college)and a license key from Dreamspark. I ran Upgrade assistant and it showed some compatibility details, beside those apps and sidebar these are my concerns:
1.Secure Boot isn't compatible with your PC
Your PC's firmware doesn't support Secure Boot so you won't be able to use it in Windows 8.
2.Dell Stage
Fingertapps
What really is Secure Boot and is it really necessary after I installed windows 8?
My second concern is that I have unpartitioned hard drive, there's only C drive which has about 60 gb free space out of 581 gb. I'm confused because I used to format my old windows xp PC now and then and it has three drives and during the format process I would choose windows xp to install in C drive and in order to do so I would follow the delete partition process. I knew very less about what I was doing when I used to format it. I just memorized the steps. So i was wondering if during the upgrade process it removes all data from C drive and installs windows 8 in an empty drive like it used to be during XP installation. I'm upgrading win 8 in my Dell inspiron 15 R with genuine win 7. It's a 2 yr old laptop so I guess it has UEFI, not sure though.
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Sep 15, 2014
I do this day in and day out with Volume Licensing but never with OEM installs...
A user that works at our company brought their personal laptop in, the hard drive failed hard drive tests so we have put one of our spare hard drives in and now we need to re-install Windows 8 x64.
Where do i get the installation media from if the users doesn't have a disc? Is it possible or do we need to order a disc?
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Apr 2, 2013
Can i install windows 7 or 8 to an external hard drive so i can take it to another computer, select it from the boot menu and it will boot up?
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Jul 2, 2014
Reloading windows 8 or 8.1 on a system that the product key is embedded in the Bios.
Scenario only concerning windows 8 or 8.1 any version, also data recover is not a concern: Systems are coming in that are built by a manufacturer (Dell, Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Emachine ect.) the system(s) are out of warranty, They are either in a boot loop, blue screening when loading windows or the hard drive has crashed and isn't loading windows at all. The customers never created recovery disks, nor can we due to windows not loading. We can not get to advanced mode and even if and when we can, creating recovery media is not available.
So let us be clear: We have a system that had windows 8 or 8.1 preinstalled by manufacturer, it was used for multiple months, no recovery media create, now the operating system is not loading, recovery partition corrupt or not accessible, refresh not available, windows product key is embedded in the Bios and is out of warranty.
What we have tried: System with failed hard drive with windows 8 sticker on it. Ran software that extracts product key from BIOS, Inserted an OEM disk for windows 8 and 8.1 when asked to input key, we used the key that was extracted, the installation tells us that the product key is not a OEM key. We do not have a skip button to continue? How in the world can we reload windows 8 or 8.1 on these systems? We have gone through all of the BIOS settings and have tried everything we can think of. If the product key for windows 8 or 8.1 is embedded in the BIOS what do we need to do to make the installation find the key and use it to continue the installation and activate.
From what we are seeing we are not the only one(s) asking this question, the problem is that the reply(s) are: use system refresh, use recovery partition, use recovery media? We understand the reasoning behind having the product key embedded but it shouldn't be this hard to use what the system already has?
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Jan 12, 2014
I recently bought a laptop with Windows 8 and have erased the hard drive while trying to install another OS (not a good move, I know). This caused problems and now I'd like to re-install windows 8, except I have no way of doing this without knowing my product key, which I cannot access through my computer now. Is there a way to re-install windows 8 without having to purchase it again?
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May 17, 2013
I want to reformat the hard drive in Windows 8 - Factory Image - in an HP Notebook computer.
HP sent me 3 disks.
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Jul 9, 2013
I got the replacement hard drive from Dell that I was told would come with Windows 8 and drivers preinstalled. Well I installed the hard drive and it tells me that NO OS can be found. I didn't have a chance to make backup discs of my own but Dell sent a Windows 8 Recovery Media CD with the laptop and now with the replacement hard drive.
When trying to install Windows 8 onto the new hard drive I get to the part where it tells me to choose a partition to install Windows 8 on and none of them will let me. There are 5 to choose from and I don't know what to do to get past this. The biggest partition which is 5 has about 934GB of space left out of 1TB but as I mentioned I can't choose it or any of the other ones for installation.
I've never had trouble like this reinstalling other versions of Windows.
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Sep 15, 2014
I have a windows 8 laptop and wanted to re install a whole new windows 8 on it. I'm going to use the generic product key than once installed use the one that i found with magic belly bean key finder. I am just worried that it might say something went wrong than have to buy windows 8 so could i partition the hard drive and than once i know the new windows 8 is good than delete the other?
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May 18, 2014
I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 and I am running Windows 8.1 Pro Update 1.
I have been unsuccessful at building a WinPE image that provides BitLocker support. I searched around the internet and found many posts. Eventually, I ended up trying to build it with the various added packages I discovered in the various posts. However, in the end, none worked and this is the message I am getting after booting into my WinPE environment:
manage-bde.exe - Application Error
The instruction at 0xa20afa3b referenced memory at 0x0000013d.
The memory could not be read.
Click on OK to terminate the program
Here are the commands I eventually ended up using to build my WinPE image:
Code: dism /image:C:Bootmacriummount /add-package /packagepath:"C:Program Files (x86)Windows Kits8.1Assessment and Deployment KitWindows Preinstallation Environmentamd64WinPE_OCsWinPE-WMI.cab"dism /image:C:Bootmacriummount /add-package /packagepath:"C:Program Files (x86)Windows Kits8.1Assessment and Deployment KitWindows Preinstallation Environment
[Code] ....
But even with all that included, I still have the same error about the memory.
Will WinPE 5.0 x64 bootable environment work on a TPM-enabled machine? If so, how did you build your custom WinPE environment?
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Jan 14, 2013
How to clean up the windows containing hard drive from everything but the system files, because I upgraded my windows and not installed it to a clean hard drive. I have a lot of unneeded files. How to do it, without reinstalling windows.
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Jul 7, 2014
I wiped my pb eastnote TE. I was restoring it to factory settings, i thought id just have put in my usb and it would reinstall everything for me, but it hasnt.. what to do, error mes im getting it ;there was a problem while resetting your pc, all I am getting is a blue screen, but the options they are giving me are not working...
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Dec 18, 2013
I tried to reinstall windows on a second hard drive, but it won't accept my product key, assumedly because I am already using it for the current windows installation on the first hard drive.
How do I transfer my license to allow a reinstallation on the second hard drive? That's the best option, so I can go back to the first drive if I want to.
Second option: If I wipe the current windows partition clean, will that enable me to reinstall on the second hard drive?
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Jul 4, 2013
I need to delete a recovery partition off my second hard drive. I've seen this link: Delete and Remove to Unlock EISA Hidden Recovery or Diagnostic Partition in Vista - My Digital Life but it's for Vista and the final command "delete partition override" doesn't work in diskpart. It comes up saying "The specified command or parameters are not supported on this system"
Yes, I really do want to delete the recovery partition because it's on my secondary HDD, I still have the recovery partition on my C: so I'm really not losing anything ....
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Nov 6, 2012
OK, long story short. I did a clean install to Windows 8 Pro 64. Because of the System Reserved partition, it showed both Win 7 and Win 8 available and would prompt to do a dual boot. I cleaned it up by following the instructions on the below link.
Dual Boot - Delete a OS - Windows 7 Forums
It now no longer dual boots, and Windows 8 is fine. The only issue remaining is that my primary drive in drive management still has unallocated space. Disk 0 has 351MB Unallocated space, and 465GB of system boot, page file, etc...
In the instructions, it says to "Right click on the partition that contains the OS you want to delete and Delete Volume. Then right click on the deleted volume and Delete Partition. Now you should have "Freespace" where this partition originally was."
Well, I can't do that. When I right-click on the unallocated space, all I can do is: New Simple Volume, Properties. Everything else is greyed out. I also can't extend the other partition, the "extend" option is also greyed out.
I'm now on Win 8... How to put that 351MB onto the main partition?
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Jan 2, 2014
Basically at the moment i am using Windows 7 Home and will be upgrading to Windows 8.1 in about a weeks time. I currently have Windows 7 installed on a 60Gb SSD and i have a secondary 500Gb Seagate Barracuda for other files. What i am wondering is if i clean install Windows 8 onto the SSD only will i still be able to use the 2nd drive in Windows 8? Basically this drive has a fair amount of music / videos etc and i would like to make to make sure i can use these. I would like to do a clean install and not an upgrade btw.
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Jul 17, 2013
I built myself a new system and I am now on my third clean install of Windows 9 Pro. The first installation was nixed due to faulty programs and the second by faulty hardware. This installation seems to be fine, at least my event log is not showing any significant errors. I really don't won't to do another clean install so the question I have is:
Can I install Windows with UEFI without reinstalling on a new hard drive formatted as GPT?
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Jan 23, 2013
I am about to upgrade another PC (about 4 months old) currently running Windows 7 64bit. The PC is set up so that although the PC has the OS and programs on the SSD (C drive), all other data and info is on the 2Tb hard drive. Their is only a single user with no password and the PC was setup (configured) so that the user profile knows to put that user info and data on the 2Tb hard drive.
I want to do a clean install and am happy to clear everything on the C drive (SSD) and the hard drive. When installing Windows 8 from the ISO image on a DVD, how do I create the similar situation that I had for user profile when running Windows 7?
Also is it possible to be able to boot up straight in to the user without having to enter a password, as I can currently do on the Windows 7 boot?
I have just upgraded an older Windows Vista PC to Windows 8 Pro through a clean install and that went perfectly, but only had a single 1Tb hard drive (C drive).
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Aug 21, 2013
I bought a brand new Acer Aspire xc600 today and it had Windows 8 installed. First thing me and my husband did was to try to install win7 (as we dislike Windows 8 for many reasons)... When it didnt work with just putting in the cd and install, we (stupidly without making recovery discs as we thought we would never need it) formated the drive and made it completely clean before installing win7 (which works now). This means we have no Windows 8 recovery disc or E-recovery management program and therefor cant do factory reset and return this piece of crap pc... (We play world of warcraft and my 7year old pc has only been updated once when it comes to graphic card to geforce 9800 and still perform better outside the game).
The performance test of the whole system give the graphics a lousy 5.0 which is worse than my husbands 3yr old graphic card as well! Only numbers that have increased is the RAM and CPU.
I feel disappointed as the graphics card should be better than mine or my husbands and have better performance even if its the "laptop sized card".
So to the issue, is there a way we could restore/reinstall the computer to factory settings with Windows 8 and Acers drivers as it was when we started it up earlier today?
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Jul 3, 2014
Here's my situation. My computer is running Windows 8.1 There is only 1 physical HD, but it has many partitions. Here is a picture of my current HD setup
The problem is that the WRE partition is literally sitting between my C and D drives, so when I shrink the C drive partition, I cannot extend the D drive with the unallocated space because it is not sitting right next to the D drive (I'm trying to shrink the C from 370 to ~60 GB, then extend the D from 550 to 850 GB with the C drive's unallocated space).
However, I found something called "AOMEI partition manager", which will let me shrink the C drive, extend the WRE partition with the unallocated space, and then shrink the WRE partition to get the unallocated space next to the D drive so I can extend it. So I'm basically using the WRE partition as a middleman between the C and D drives.
I'll still have the WRE partition (after extending and reshrinking it), my system partitions, recovery partition and everything like that. I just don't know if resizing the WRE partition like that will make it nonfunctional or something, even though all the data will still be on it.
FYI I have already created a full hard disk image with Acronis of the current hard drive setup before trying anything. I also have a USB drive that is bootable with a Windows 8.1 ISO that I was initially going to use to just completely format the hard drive and use Acronis as my recovery program instead of Windows recovery partitions, but I'm too worried about the EFI boot partition and all that stuff and possibly making my computer unbootable.
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Mar 5, 2013
I'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
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Dec 26, 2012
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Essentials, it's filled with tons of old photos, movies, docs, games, and I'm scared to think of what else. The SATA to USB connector broke on it, so I took the drive apart and put it inside my computer. I opened up device manager because it wasn't showing up automatically and the 2TB is showing up as unallocated, I'm freaking out now because I'm scared the data was somehow deleted.What do I do?
edit: I realize also this isn't directly related to Windows 8 (besides the fact it's the OS I'm on), but I don't know where else to post it. I'd also like to say that I had a really deep feeling the drive was going to break continually for about two weeks before it happened, so if you have a similar feeling about something, don't ignore it!
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Jun 22, 2014
Can you save to hard drive and One Drive at Same Time?
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