Replacing the hard drive

[lenp]

A little background...

Originally a Windows 7 Toshiba Satellite. I partitioned the hard drive and installed Windows 8 back in 2012 and then upgraded to 8.1. All fine a good until this morning when the hard drive decided to start acting strange.

 

Went to Office Max and got a new drive. Installed it and Windows 8 from the original "upgrade" cds (or dvds). Windows works great BUT I could not validate the installation. Error showed I was trying to do a "fresh" install with "upgrade" media.

 

Called Microsoft to try a phone validation. After talking with at least eight different people I was transferred to the technical support only to get a recording "we are closed - call back later". That took nearly two hours of wait time to get to this point - what a waste.

 

Started Googleing some more and came across this site: http://www.guidingtech.com/16405/probable-fix-activating-windows-8-clean-install/

 

They suggested going into "regedit" and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/and look for the key MediaBootInstall

Then change the value data from a 1 to a 0, then exit and run a command prompt as administrator with a slmgr /rearm command. Then restart windows.

 

I am happy to report it worked great and I am now validated!

 

Everyone I talked to at MS said I had to re-install Windows 7 and then upgrade to 8. If only I had kept the media that did not come with the computer! I wonder if restore disks would have worked on a fresh install.

 

Thought this might help someone else if they ever have a hard disk failure.

 

Lenp

[RV_]

Thanks Len!

I had issues with an actual upgrade not wanting to go from 8 to 8.1. It is a Win 7 box I still have as my backup desktop and I reverted it to Windows 7. I still have that spare license so may just upgrade it. I am about to do a factory restore from the Lenovo disks I had sent to me when new. If I run into an issue I will have another resource.