Reinstalling Windows 8 OEM on laptops

Question

Windows

Hello. When buying a new "device" Dell Inspiron 14z, the question arose: what to do with a reinstalled system? As it turned out, most manufacturers now do not supply disks with Windows and provide only a means to restore the factory state. As a result, I have a system partition of almost 500 GB without it being possible to repartition the disk, because. in this case, their recovery system will not work (I've been poking around for a week).

There are two recovery options in the recovery system:

1. Restore only the system partition to its original state
2. Restore the entire disk to its original state

So, I create a “D” partition, for example, and then I try to restore the system partition - option number 1, as a result, the software gives an error and that’s it. If you return the entire disk to the factory state, then everything works, except that the disk layout also returns to the factory state. As a result, forgive all the data on other sections.

From those. Dell support has never been able to get an answer, they strongly recommend their customers to use the recovery system, regardless of the fact that their customers want to save data and change the disk layout. Well, this situation is only with Dell, but also with Asus, HP, Lenovo, etc. Someone is lucky and the laptop comes with a disk for reinstalling the system, but now this seems to be happening less and less. Dell has the option to order such a drive, but only if you are located in the United States.

If someone has encountered this problem, then I ask for help, I still have not found an option how to do a clean installation, or restore the system partition without overwriting other partitions. I can’t download the image from the Microsoft website, although I have already paid for the license, I have never seen more nonsense in my life ...

After reading on this topic, it turned out that there are some images for MSDN subscribers, if there is System Builder, but I didn’t find it anywhere use these images to reinstall the OEM system and is the key wired in the bios suitable?

Answer 1

You can download your OEM version of Windows from trackers and restore it with it, everything will turn out and be activated, it has happened more than once on Habré. But it would still be a violation of the license from Microsoft's point of view.

Answer 2

Demolish everything under a clean one and install from scratch the operating system that you want. As a bonus, get 8-10 Gb of hard drive space. This is what I did with the latest laptop (Samsung Chronos), installing Win 7 and Linux. Of course, it's a pity that I had to pay for the cost of the OS (which is included in the price of the laptop). There are two options: 1. look for a laptop without an OS; 2. immediately after the purchase, without activating the OS, go through the refund procedure for the OS. At samsung, this procedure is described in detail. I think other manufacturers have something similar. But I was too lazy to mess around with it and the device was needed urgently, but in order to get the money back, the laptop had to be given to the service and the terms were announced around 2 weeks.

Answer 3

The fact of the matter is that Windows 8 suits me quite well, and I would like to leave it with the ability to change HDD partitions. Damn, this whole situation is similar to the fact that a person bought a car, and can only drive in a straight line, for any “sneeze” running to the service. Downloading from torrents is great, but I want to find a legal way. It is possible to purchase System Builder, but will it be activated with a key from bios?

Answer 4

Win8 x64 SL Rus, as you correctly wrote above, the MSDN image which is the first in the list is suitable for this?

no, it won't fit.

Answer 5

In Windows 8, there are special reset / refresh options for a quick reinstallation, why don't you use them?

Answer 6

Thank you all for your replies, now the situation is more or less cleared up. The position of end users is, to put it mildly, uncomfortable, well, what it really is ...
Thanks again to everyone!

Answer 7

Most often, the key hardwired into the BIOS is the key from Windows 8 Single Language (usually the 64-bit version).