Upgrading hard drive

Micael1234 · Apr 27, 2013

So I just bought a laptop that had windows 8 in it, but the hard drive was swapped for another and the guy put a cracked version on it. The windows 8 sticker has no key but I heard its in the bios. I also have no windows disks, what do I do?

dodger46 · Apr 27, 2013

Micael1234 :

Contact your Laptop Manufacturer for Recovery Disks, it's the only way. There are no downloads for the OEM version of Win 8, which is what you require. You can use Belarc Advisor to find your key, but it's useless without Installation Media...

Micael1234 · Apr 27, 2013

Sorry forgot to mention, the laptop has no optical drive but is windows 8 native, wouldn't downloading an image from any site and the key would automatically be identified?

Micael1234 · Apr 27, 2013

The person who sold me the laptop still has the old drive, is there anything that can be done with that to switch it over to the new drive?

dodger46 · Apr 27, 2013

Micael1234 :

It would, in theory, but you can only get OEM direct from Manufacturer, usually in the form of Recovery disks which will have the OS and all the drivers you need. There is no OEM download... Don't know how they get round the problem of netbooks with no optical drive... perhaps they will give you an individual download link...

dodger46 · Apr 27, 2013

Never saw your last post. You could clone the old drive to your new one, but you'd need to do it on another machine. Can you not get the old drive back? Even if you could borrow it for long enough to create a system image on a USB external drive which could then be used to re-install to your new one.. You just type 'Create Recovery' on your Start screen, choose the App from Settings and Window will do it all for you...

Micael1234 · Apr 27, 2013

Yes, I thought of doing that, he's working with me tomorrow and he's bringing it with him, I have a spare laptop we can connect it to and do that, thanks for the help

Micael1234 · Apr 27, 2013

Will there be any problems with having 1 key on 2 hard drives? He told me he was connecting it to his desktop.

dodger46 · Apr 28, 2013

Micael1234 :

Afraid so, because it's OEM it's locked to the mobo on your laptop, and can't be used elsewhere... he'll be ok to use the drive for data once you've installed. You may have to telephone M'soft to activate your new install.

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