Moving Windows 8.1 from old to new hard drive

[Africa Matt]

Hi there,

Really like this forum and have found very helpful information in the past. Hopefully some light could be shed on my current issue.

I am working on my Asus N56 - preinstalled with windows 8 on the hard drive. I noticed a few weeks ago some clicking noises in the hard drive and so I preemptively ordered a new one. In the past, what I would do in the migration process is use something along the lines of Redo Backup and Recovery on a thumb drive with YUMI on it (really nifty program, check it out if it doesn't ring a bell).

On Windows 7 I can easily boot into YUMI and then select Redo or any other application I want to run. Doing this I could easily clone my drive onto an external one, put the new hard drive in, and clone it onto it and voila - same everything, new hard drive. And I wouldn't have any Windows 8 licensing issues etc.

Problem is, I can't get the computer to boot into boot options (even when going through Windows key + C etc to get to boot drive options, YUMI won't boot up and thus I can't easily clone the drive in the way I've done in the past).

So I said, screw it I'll do a fresh install. Downloaded the Windows Install Media from Microsoft and made a Windows 8.1 install USB flash drive and was able to install it on the new hard drive. I used a tool to figure out what the embedded OEM license key is for Windows 8.1 on my computer and wrote it down. Anyway, long and the short of it after the install it is saying the license key is invalid.

Any suggestions for how I might go about getting this working? Ideally I could get it so that the laptop will recognize bootable media instead of just going straight into Windows. Even "forcing" it to boot first to a bootable drive still skips the drive and goes straight to Windows.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated. I haven't found specific tidbits on the net to help me solve this yet.

Thanks!

 

[fkr]

was your PC shipped with OS windows 8 (not 8.1). if so you would need to install windows 8. put your key in there and then do the upgrade.

your windows key should be on the bottom of your laptop also

 

[ToineF]

Does it really say the key is invalid? or you can't activate?

If you went through the whole installation process you must be on the activation part, no?

If you can boot in windows try to do the phone activation.

I had a similar problem, where I had a valid product key that was installed on another computer, since that computer died I took the same key and reinstalled on my new built.

I couldn't activate, but I did the phone activation and it was fine.

Good luck

 

[fkr]

phone activation may work also

 

[USAFRet]

Downloaded the Windows Install Media from Microsoft and made a Windows 8.1 install USB flash drive and was able to install it on the new hard drive. I used a tool to figure out what the embedded OEM license key is for Windows 8.1 on my computer and wrote it down. Anyway, long and the short of it after the install it is saying the license key is invalid.

The downloaded OS is a retail version. Which will not activate/recognize an OEM license.

Solution:
Clone from one drive to the other. CloneZilla, Acronis True Image, etc...
or
Use whatever factory reset is included that allows you to create you own install media.
or
Buy a set of factory install media from the manufacturer
or
Buy your own OS

 

[fkr]

Downloaded the Windows Install Media from Microsoft and made a Windows 8.1 install USB flash drive and was able to install it on the new hard drive. I used a tool to figure out what the embedded OEM license key is for Windows 8.1 on my computer and wrote it down. Anyway, long and the short of it after the install it is saying the license key is invalid.

The downloaded OS is a retail version. Which will not activate/recognize an OEM license.

Solution:
Clone from one drive to the other. CloneZilla, Acronis True Image, etc...
or
Use whatever factory reset is included that allows you to create you own install media.
or
Buy a set of factory install media from the manufacturer
or
Buy your own OS

great info ^^^

these links may help and the second one has some of the asus recovery tool options i beleive

http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/22780-how-create-windows-installation-dvd.html

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/5132-recovery-drive-create-usb-flash-drive-windows-8-a.html

 

[ShadyHamster]

If you are trying to install windows 8.1 on a laptop with a windows 8.0 key you need to use a generic placeholder key during the installation process then activate windows once you are on the desktop using your embedded windows 8.0 key.

This is the generic placeholder key you need to use:
334NH-RXG76-64THK-C7CKG-D3VPT

This key is purely a placeholder key to install windows and it can not be used in any way to activate windows or bypass any activation process, it can be found on numerous how to sites such as:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/microsoft-product-activation/installation-of-windows-8-1-with-a-windows-8-0-retail-product-key-notes/

 

[USAFRet]

^^ That probably works as well.

 

[Africa Matt]

Downloaded the Windows Install Media from Microsoft and made a Windows 8.1 install USB flash drive and was able to install it on the new hard drive. I used a tool to figure out what the embedded OEM license key is for Windows 8.1 on my computer and wrote it down. Anyway, long and the short of it after the install it is saying the license key is invalid.

The downloaded OS is a retail version. Which will not activate/recognize an OEM license.

Solution:
Clone from one drive to the other. CloneZilla, Acronis True Image, etc...
or
Use whatever factory reset is included that allows you to create you own install media.
or
Buy a set of factory install media from the manufacturer
or
Buy your own OS

Ah, did not realize the install media will not work for the OEM Windows 8 pre-installed. Good to know.

So like I said, I'd love to just clone the drive - I've used CloneZilla before / Redo. But I can't for the life of me get Asus to boot into my flash drive (or the partition on my external hard drive) that I try to install either Redo or CloneZilla. Is this a common problem to Windows 8? To try to boot to it, I have tried the following:

1) Windows Key + C - go into settings, recovery, advanced boot recovery options, restart, and then select "boot from drives" select the drive I want to boot from. It restarts but then boots straight into windows.

2) Booting into the BIOS and manually selecting the drive I want to boot from first. Still boots straight into windows.

I even tried taking the hard drive out and then just trying to boot into the flash drive but whenever I tried to tell BIOS to boot into the flash drive it would just go straight to BIOS.

I've never had this as an issue before when I've done work on XP/Vista/7....

 

[Africa Matt]

Ah, you know what I'll do. I'll just take both hard drives out, use a different computer to just boot into a utility and clone the drive that way. There we go. Doh, surprised I didn't think of that earlier lol. That should work, if not I'll be back. Thanks for the help and advice everyone.

 

[USAFRet]

Ah, you know what I'll do. I'll just take both hard drives out, use a different computer to just boot into a utility and clone the drive that way. There we go. Doh, surprised I didn't think of that earlier lol. That should work, if not I'll be back. Thanks for the help and advice everyone.

That still might not work. Cloning a partially failing drive is also possibly cloning bad data.

 

[Africa Matt]

Ah, you know what I'll do. I'll just take both hard drives out, use a different computer to just boot into a utility and clone the drive that way. There we go. Doh, surprised I didn't think of that earlier lol. That should work, if not I'll be back. Thanks for the help and advice everyone.

That still might not work. Cloning a partially failing drive is also possibly cloning bad data.

Well, my assumption due to the clicking noises I heard would be that it is more likely a hardware failure rather than bad data? Or do the two generally go hand in hand? My hardware knowledge is pretty limited.

 

[USAFRet]

Ah, you know what I'll do. I'll just take both hard drives out, use a different computer to just boot into a utility and clone the drive that way. There we go. Doh, surprised I didn't think of that earlier lol. That should work, if not I'll be back. Thanks for the help and advice everyone.

That still might not work. Cloning a partially failing drive is also possibly cloning bad data.

Well, my assumption due to the clicking noises I heard would be that it is more likely a hardware failure rather than bad data? Or do the two generally go hand in hand? My hardware knowledge is pretty limited.

Right. Possible/probable hardware issue.
But...a clone is a sector by sector copy. It does not care if it is a corrupt sector or not...it gets copied.

You can try it and see what happens. It may work, it may not.

 

[fkr]

you lose nothing by trying. it is even a good idea just in case that hdd does fail you will have a backup of the content.

 

[nocturns2]

Have you checked your bios setting? The one that tells the computer what the boot sequence is?