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Laptop Nightmare


ir_cow

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I've been spending the last few days trying reinstall windows 8 on my laptop. Why windows 8 you ask? because it came with a key. Anwyays my hard drive died after a year so I replaced it with a Crucial MX100 512GB SSD but so far been unable to reinstall windows. First problem was finding a copy of windows 8 as the product key does not work to allow me to download it from M$ website. I found other "methods" of getting a copy. It seems no matter what version of windows 8 I use they all pop up saying I need to repair windows and to contact ASUS. I don't know how it needs to be repaired if the drive is new but I am unable to "repair" windows because you need to make a repair disc inside windows before it craps out (go figure) AND it has to be your laptop as other OEM or retails do not work as repair discs (Thanks M$).

 

So i'm completely stuck, my friends retail W8 does the same thing and so does M$ W8 ISO from it's website + the other methods all do the same thing. To top it off windows 7 freezes half way installing and i've tried different copies also (legit of course).

 

 

Does anyone have an idea or should I just throw this up on ebay and let some sucker buy it?

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I recently repaired my aunts ASUS laptop with windows 8 on it. I wanted to install windows 7 on it, but I couldn't get it to boot to the disc. So what I did was wipe the drive clean and boot up the laptop, it said windows 8 needed to be restored to factory settings. So I let it go, and in about 30min, a fresh install of windows was up and running(didn't even have to put in a product key during the restore). No restore disk needed, not lying. It was strange because the laptop had no BIOS, but only a windows 8 like BIOS, which was useful for 8, but it didn't let me install anything else then windows 8.

Edited by Black64

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the problem I have is the orginal drive is bad so no matter what I do it just want to restore factory settings if I load windows 8 disc but than it tells me I cant because I dont have a repair disc.

 

Sounds to me like I just have to put it on ebay without the drive and hope someone buys it soon so I can get a new laptop.

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well I solved the problem. after doing a lot of reading and trail and error I found any laptop (asus atlest) that came with W 8.1 is cannot be downgraded to anything else ever because of the bios blocking anything else from running. luckly I only had W8 installed so in the bios I could turn off secure boot and along with other usb prioity things.

 

Afterwords I was able to boot windows 7 disc, delete windows 8 partitions, including the hidden one on the SSD cache drive. I thought the cache drive was blank but it's mostly a windows recovery partition (that doesnt even work). I tried to install windows 7 but it got a error about half way through installing. previously I tried Windows 8 both retail and OEM which gave me errors or told me to repair disc. I finally got a hold of windows 8.1 retail and was able to fully install it. Now the problem is the ASUS key is for volume license and doesn't work on retail. So i'm using a fake key and as long as i never do a windows update I will be fine.

 

How dumb is this!?! So just to warn people. NEVER buy a windows 8 laptop unless you are planning on using windows 8 forever. If it happens to fail, than your double screwed like me unless you have a recovery disc. A disc that you have to make in windows per machine BEFORE you have any problems as other peoples repair discs will not work.

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  • 1 month later...

Haven't tried it in this case of windows 8 laptops, but on other systems that didn't "support" windows 7 - I find that it works just fine if I install 7 to the drive on ANOTHER system and then swap it over and patch any drivers that 7 doesn't find.

+1 I would have eventually tried this

 

I thought I heard that the main reason 8.1 came out was due to Win8 locking harddrives from going backwards in Windows versions, are you able to install Win7 now that 8.1 is installed (and really...do you even need to? I have found not one issue with 8.1 once I installed Classic Shell and ran the full administrator account)

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