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My laptop seems to have a built-in key in the BIOS for Windows. It seems to be a Windows 8 thing, yes? Presumably won't work if I try and install 7..? Doesn't seem to work with 10 as setup still prompts me.
It's a newish thing. Not sure about 7, but with 10 you can either go through the route of an in place upgrade to register with the W10 license servers (and then do a clean upgrade if you want that), the same as with any other W7/W8 installation. Or you can wait a week or two until they release the November Update, which claims to work with W8 keys in the BIOS.
I just installed 10 (took about 5 minutes!) but wouldn't register. Apparently it found the key ok, but because it'd never been used with an activated OS (I just got this laptop with a work version of 7 on it) it wouldn't activate.
So I think I should install 8.1 on it, activate that, then overwrite it with 10.
I thought it was a Windows 8 thing that manufacturers fitted due to the operating system not having a Windows key it that was made irrelevant with the 8.1 upgrade.
[quote=molgrips ]Apparently it found the key ok, but because it'd never been used with an activated OS (I just got this laptop with a work version of 7 on it) it wouldn't activate.
I thought you'd been on the W10 thread? It's a bit more complicated than that - your work W7 should count as an activated OS, but in order to register on the MS servers as an authorised W10 device you have to do an in place upgrade from an activated OS. So once you've done the 8.1 install (you could have done it with the W7 install) you need to upgrade from that to W10 rather than overwrite with W10.
As I mentioned in my first post, if you're prepared to wait, the November update of W10 will supposedly work with W7 and W8 keys (including BIOS ones) without needing to go through that rigmarole.
Well.. I couldn't do an in-place upgrade at first.. because.. well.. you know how I like to bugger about with things...
- Specified new laptop as not having an OS on it to speed up delivery
- Laptop arrives with the shittiest build ever of 7 on it with Windows 98 style everything, apparently this is our corpoate Win build 🙄
- Format it to install Ubuntu to test it out whilst the corporate linux is downloading even though I'll have to do it again when the corporate one downloads
- Leave a bit off the end of the drive to install a cheeky personal un-corporatified Windows
- Find W10 iso pre-downloaded, attempt that
- Fail
- Post on STW
Lenovo W541 though, ridiculously fast.
[quote=molgrips ]Well.. I couldn't do an in-place upgrade at first.. because.. well.. you know how I like to bugger about with things...
😆
Does your work not have a license key you can use? We just run a script and it licenses any machine...
November update is out, you should be able to install with a W7 or W8 key...