Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

[Spork Schivago]

Hello,

I have a customer who brought me a PC. He's from a couple hundred miles away so time is a bit of an issue. Where he's from, he took it to a repair shop and they said his hard drive was dead and it'd cost around 500$ to fix. Chances are good, they were replacing the hard drive and selling him a copy of Windows 8.1.

He decided to purchase a solid state drive and 8GB of RAM for this laptop. I started installing Windows 8.1 It successfully pulled the product key from the BIOS. He wants 10 on it because he hates 8 so during the installation process, I was prompted with a window to update to 10 for free. I selected that and 10 got installed. However, when I went to verify the activation status, it showed it wasn't activated.

I run slui 3 and manually enter the product key, it says the product key is in use by another computer. I'm thinking too many parts changed. I called Microsoft. It was pretty much a waste of time talking to them. They said I had to contact the manufacturer for help. I feel they're going to say I either have to buy a retail copy of 8.1 or purchase recovery disks.

Does anyone know how I can get this damn thing to work? Is there any way to pre-activate 8.1 if I reinstall it? Like you can do with 7, using slmgr.vbs ? The key in the BIOS is there...I see the OEM Table ID is SLIC-MPC. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[diif]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

You tried the phone activation ?
There is software out there that will activate for you, what happens when you put 10 on though I do not know.

[kaboom]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

Hello,

I have a customer who brought me a PC. He's from a couple hundred miles away so time is a bit of an issue. Where he's from, he took it to a repair shop and they said his hard drive was dead and it'd cost around 500$ to fix. Chances are good, they were replacing the hard drive and selling him a copy of Windows 8.1.

"Chances are" (no, not the song) that it's the old bestbuy scam: Bark out some absurd price for a "repair," hoping either the customer either throws their hands up and "gives up," going for whatever new crap that the "tech" gets sales commission on. Or the other type, that "worships" the hack and eagerly pays any prices.

"Chances are" they didn't even go so far as device drivers, let alone data migration from customer's backup devices and/or recovered stuff from old hdd.

"Chances are" customer was grossly ripped off- why the hell do they have to settle for hate/10 when their 7 was working fine (except for the usual shitware people install themselves)?! I mean, isn't that what dell did? Those suckasses would always "convince" their so-called customers that data issues automatically translated into hardware issues. I say "so-called customers," because if they actually had pride and gave a damn, they'd have the customers' best interests in mind.

Ya, download shitware like a mouthbreather- of course your HDD and mobo are bad! All the "proof" anyone needs is that winblows no longer boots, therefore, it must be that HDD. Anyone with "logic" like that couldn't troubleshoot themselves out of a wet paper bag.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

You're right, the old hard drive isn't even dead. The installation is messed up. I successfully ran scandisk from another PC (had it hooked up externally) and it scanned successfully. I can boot into Windows. I type his password and it shows the Windows 8 start program but I can't do anything. CTRL-ALT-DELETE doesn't work, no buttons work, mouse doesn't work. I was thinking if I could find away to get to a command prompt, perhaps running something like:

slmgr.vbs -upk

Might remove the product key from the Microsoft's servers, so when I plug the SSD back in, the product key won't show up as being used by another machine. What do you guys think?

The fact I can access the information on the old hard drive gives me hope. Maybe I could backup the c:\windows\spp\store folder and replace that on the new solid state? I think that only works if you activated by telephone though.

[diif]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

It won't remove the key from their servers.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

You tried the phone activation ?
There is software out there that will activate for you, what happens when you put 10 on though I do not know.

Yes, that's what got me to the tech support people. The 10 key ID number wasn't recognized as a valid key. Tech support had me run slui 03 and try to manually enter the product key. That's when I got the message that the key was being used by another machine.

If I were to take a guess, I would say the new SSD drive and RAM makes this machine look like a totally different machine, although replacing the harddrive and RAM shouldn't trigger such a thing. I could see the motherboard being switched with a different motherboard.

On the old hard drive, I managed to get to a command prompt. I run slmgr.vbs but everything errors out, saying something about the OS being a non-core edition and how I need to run slui instead. This is very frustrating.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

Hard drive is dying. I just tried running dd if=/dev/sdc of=/home/spork/backups/Ryan/sdc.img and got:

dd: error reading `/dev/sdc': Input/output error
1745808+0 records in
1745808+0 records out
893853696 bytes (894 MB) copied, 19.214 s, 46.5 MB/s

I'm trying to copy the recovery partition right now. There's 6 partitions total:

/dev/sdc1   400M  Windows recovery environment
/dev/sdc2   260M  EFI System
/dev/sdc3   128M  Microsoft reserved
/dev/sdc4  273.5G  Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdc5   451M  Windows recovery environment
/dev/sdc6  23.4G  Microsoft basic data

Any ideas what other partitions I should try grabbing before I lose the whole drive?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

I got all of them except for sdc4, the one with the Windows installation / user data. Gonna try ddrescue on it. Anyone want to suggest some good command line switches for that?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

It won't remove the key from their servers.

Thank you Diif. Do you have any suggestions on how to continue?

Do you think if I install 8.1 again, instead of selecting the update to 10 during installation, it might actually successfully activate in 8.1? Maybe going to 10 directly messed it up or maybe the OEM disc I'm using isn't correct? I'd think if that was the case though, it would have rejected the product key.

[diif]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

The user data is the only important partition, ALWAYS ensure it's backed up before playing with a system.
If I wasn't so fussed about legalities, I'd put 7 on, activate that then upgrade to 10.
Well actually I'd stop at 7 and be done.

[kaboom]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

If I were to take a guess, I would say the new SSD drive and RAM makes this machine look like a totally different machine, although replacing the harddrive and RAM shouldn't trigger such a thing. I could see the motherboard being switched with a different motherboard.

Yes it will, and did, even with XP on "slow" days for M$.

On the old hard drive, I managed to get to a command prompt. I run slmgr.vbs but everything errors out, saying something about the OS being a non-core edition and how I need to run slui instead. This is very frustrating.

Oh but you asked for it! Especially when you've opted to downgrade to HateTen! Man up and do right for the customer- get em back on 7 (repair machine to original state/OS) no matter what. Find one of those "official" digitalriver win7 images, and "adjust" it so customer gets what he rightly deserves. You shouldn't have been waiting this out- where were you back then? Were you saving those w7 images or blowing it all off because "everything's exaggerated?"

As to M$ and their "permission" game? Fuck 'em- caving in to that is weakness and they know it. Notice how each higher version number is worse than the last in this regard? And see how it's used against you? But, like I said in that other post, if you didn't speak up/out back in 2007, you've no place complaining now. Unless you took off those M$-rose-colored glasses, and used your head and put foresight into where things were going back then.

No excuse not to, except ignorance. You had 9 years of "practice" between IEGate and Longhorn. Just as everyone's had another 9 years of "experience" between Longhorn and today.

But that doesn't matter- the only thing important is to be "winners," get on the WinTrain, and be pushed around by M$.

Losers with no pride or respect for their customers. Not surprising, really, after the "old team" was fired and the windowsfone jerks got put in charge of "desktop OSes."

[kaboom]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

The user data is the only important partition, ALWAYS ensure it's backed up before playing with a system.
If I wasn't so fussed about legalities, I'd put 7 on, activate that then upgrade

Funny how you think that even matters. Surprisingly, you think that's more important than how M$ has been jerking you and your "customers" around the entire time!

Oh, excuse me- M$ can play nasty, just as long as they call it "updating."

You really don't get it.

[diif]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

Jerking how ?
Are you an IT professional Kaboom ?

[kaboom]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

Jerking how ?

NVM, M$ love$ ya, keep it up- they'd never sabotage anything.

Are you an IT professional Kaboom ?

I guess not, since I haven't fallen for their "mindless update" LIES.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

The user data is the only important partition, ALWAYS ensure it's backed up before playing with a system.
If I wasn't so fussed about legalities, I'd put 7 on, activate that then upgrade to 10.
Well actually I'd stop at 7 and be done.

Yeah, he doesn't want any data back from the old drive at all, so I wasn't considered with data recovery. Only reason now, I was thinking maybe because only the hard drive and RAM changed, if I could successfully copy all the partitions, I could just write them to the new drive. Then, boot up, it'd show as activated and I could install 10. That'd register the PC with the 10 servers, then I should be able to do a clean install of 10.

Would that work? Or would it detect that the hardware changed and change the activation status from active to not-active?

I too thought about putting 7 on it. The way I'd do it would be illegal, I think. I'd modify the BIOS, inject the SLIC data for the HP's that came with 7, preactive 7 using an OEM generic key and put 10 on it. I wouldn't feel so bad because as far as I'm concerned, this guy is entitled to a free copy of 10. Replacing the hard drive and RAM shouldn't make it a "new" PC. With Windows 7, this isn't a problem. We've successfully upgraded my wife's RAM and replaced the hard drive and the product key never stopped working. Makes me wonder if there's something else going on here.

[Topcat]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

I havent updated a couple of my W7 laptops in a couple years...they haven't exploded, nor are they crawling with malware. I've been very untrusting of MS since the force-feed release of 10. I do believe that Windows was the better OS all the way through Win7, but they've been sliding down the shitpipe since 8. Am I going to swear them off and say (falsely) that some variety of linux or 'droid (google is no better than MS when it comes to spying)? No....I am just very very careful about updating anything. I used to trust MS implicitly when it came to critical updates....if there was an update that broke something, there would quickly be a fix for it....but now, the things that break are intentional and the spying progressively gets worse....but anyone who claims that any one OS (or browser, or program, or website) doesn't spy at all is quite naive....they all do to some degree....except BCN of course! The key is knowing how to avoid, remove, or bypass it. Its a big ad campaign primarily, but a lot of malicious things can come out of it, along with a lot of dangerous precedents for the future. The wild wild west of computing is LONG GONE fellas!

[diif]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

Thought so the way you carry on.

As the saying goes " an empty box rattles loudest"

I know my shit, and get paid very well for it. And don't ASSume...well you know the rest.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

Yes it will, and did, even with XP on "slow" days for M$.

This is somewhat true I think. From what I've read, When you make a significant hardware change to your computer, such as upgrading the hard disk and memory at the same time, you might be required to activate Windows again. ( http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7 ).

Perhaps why we got away with it on my wife's PC is because we didn't do the RAM and harddrive at the same time. We had replaced the hard drive shortly after the manufacturer's warranty ran out (it died). And then maybe a year later, we upgraded the RAM. We had no problems reinstalling 7.

Oh but you asked for it! Especially when you've opted to downgrade to HateTen! Man up and do right for the customer- get em back on 7 (repair machine to original state/OS) no matter what. Find one of those "official" digitalriver win7 images, and "adjust" it so customer gets what he rightly deserves. You shouldn't have been waiting this out- where were you back then? Were you saving those w7 images or blowing it all off because "everything's exaggerated?"

I think you're confused here. I didn't ask to put 10 on this machine. I was asked to put 10 on this machine. People pay me money to fix their PCs. Although I use Linux and have Linux running on both my computers, if a customer comes to me asking me to put Windows 3.11 on their computer, for money, I will do that.

As for the Windows 7 stuff, it's not that easy. I have legitimate Windows 7 discs but the machine came with Windows 8 or 8.1. I would still need a product key to legally put 7 on the machine and then upgrade to 10 for the customer. The problem is the whole key thing. The machine came with 8 or 8.1. I don't think I should have to purchase a new version of Windows to reinstall the OS. Even if I talked him into keeping 8 / 8.1 (which I don't think I should do), I still wouldn't be able to put 8 or 8.1 on without him purchasing a new key. That's the problem.

As to M$ and their "permission" game? Fuck 'em- caving in to that is weakness and they know it. Notice how each higher version number is worse than the last in this regard? And see how it's used against you? But, like I said in that other post, if you didn't speak up/out back in 2007, you've no place complaining now. Unless you took off those M$-rose-colored glasses, and used your head and put foresight into where things were going back then.

No excuse not to, except ignorance. You had 9 years of "practice" between IEGate and Longhorn. Just as everyone's had another 9 years of "experience" between Longhorn and today.

I'm not following. Although I don't really care for Microsoft, I've never had a customer bring me a PC running something other than a Microsoft or Macintosh operating system. I don't remember anything from 2007 or what other post you might be talking about. I moved away from the Microsoft OS back when I was in middle school. I graduated in 99 so that would have been the summer of 1994 or so. I still use Windows in virtual machines and on my wife's computer. If I don't learn the OSes, I cannot properly fix them.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

I havent updated a couple of my W7 laptops in a couple years...they haven't exploded, nor are they crawling with malware. I've been very untrusting of MS since the force-feed release of 10. I do believe that Windows was the better OS all the way through Win7, but they've been sliding down the shitpipe since 8. Am I going to swear them off and say (falsely) that some variety of linux or 'droid (google is no better than MS when it comes to spying)? No....I am just very very careful about updating anything. I used to trust MS implicitly when it came to critical updates....if there was an update that broke something, there would quickly be a fix for it....but now, the things that break are intentional and the spying progressively gets worse....but anyone who claims that any one OS (or browser, or program, or website) doesn't spy at all is quite naive....they all do to some degree....except BCN of course! The key is knowing how to avoid, remove, or bypass it. Its a big ad campaign primarily, but a lot of malicious things can come out of it, along with a lot of dangerous precedents for the future. The wild wild west of computing is LONG GONE fellas!

I honestly thought Windows 7 was probably the best Windows version that Microsoft released. From working on these machines, the majority of the people who have asked for the free Windows 10 update were people's who's machines came with Windows 8 / 8.1. I think that was a horrible OS, personally. I've only met one user who liked 8 / 8.1 and he's staying with it. Everyone else wants something that resembles 7 and seeing how 10 looks more similar to 7 and they can get 10 for free, whereas they'd have to pay for the 7 "downgrade", I think that's the main reason they're making the switch.

The doctor's the only one who wants to go from something other than 8 to 10. He gave me a 7 disc and product key and wants that on there and then the free upgrade. I think maybe the reason he did that instead of purchasing a 10 disc was in case he didn't like 10, he could have me reinstall 7 without having to buy another OS.

[kaboom]

Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation

I havent updated a couple of my W7 laptops in a couple years...they haven't exploded, nor are they crawling with malware.

Damn straight... That whole ploy by M$ was/is nothing more than fearmongering and generating/grooming a desired response, based on emotional thinking.

You and I both know it was never about giving a damn about those older/better systems; the only end to that means was brainwashing even more fools onto the HateTrain. And that's ALL it is.

I see people on BCN, of all places, making up the stupidest excuses and rationalizations as to why "updates are required."

What did I say previously? If repeatedly sticking your finger into a live light socket hurts, step one is stop putting your finger in there dumbass!

And so it is with winblows!

I've been very untrusting of MS since the force-feed release of 10.

Rightly so. M$ has been on a blitzkrieg after the fallout of xbone and vistahate, and is beyond brazen in their "TenWashing." No one except stupid trusting children should be falling for M$'s latest pukefest.

I do believe that Windows was the better OS all the way through Win7, but they've been sliding down the shitpipe since 8.

Because the winfone(y) team was brought in to "innovate" their backdoor bullshit, starting with 8 out of the box, and backported to XP/vista/7 by way of "updates" (post vista) and "media player addons" (XP).

Am I going to swear them off and say (falsely) that some variety of linux or 'droid (google is no better than MS when it comes to spying)? No....I am just very very careful about updating anything.

As anyone should be.

I used to trust MS implicitly when it came to critical updates....if there was an update that broke something, there would quickly be a fix for it....

Because in the "old days," they did try to fix some things...

but now, the things that break are intentional and the spying progressively gets worse....

See above comments on "out with the old, in with the new" winfone(y)-on-your-PC.

but anyone who claims one OS doesn't spy at all is quite naive....they all do to some degree. The key is knowing how to avoid, remove, or bypass it. Its a big ad campaign primarily, but a lot of malicious things can come out of it, along with a lot of dangerous precedents for the future.

Look what precedents were set after IEgate, for example. Every post-98 windows OS had internet exploder "integrated" as the shell and other DLLs were "shared" and made available for lazy, shitty programers. Ones who couldn't write their own code could hook into IE's stuff. And activeX? Don't even start...

After that was "smoothed over," we got (some of us, anyway ) the big farce of "activation." And one stepping stone leads to another- "activation" conditioned those for "rental office," who'd otherwise not have fallen for it. With rental office comes rental files- along that parallel, look at that dumbed-down "outlook.com" thing.

The wild wild west of computing is LONG GONE fellas!

Don't waste your breath- to some here on BCN, those speaking out are only making things up or exaggerating. Sadly, they don't even realize their part of the problem.