Things to do before clean Win10 install.

I've been having a few issues with my laptop (mainly a dead CD drive that I'm also planning to replace) so I've decided to buy a new HD (the exitsting one is healthy at the moment) and try a clean install of win 10 keeping my existing HD in reserve for now. If things go well I'll stick it in an external enclosure later.

Will I need my Windows activation key and if so where/how do I find it?

Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

If you have already updated to Win 10 then the laptop will be registered and all you need to do is skip the two points where it asks for a key and at the end it will automatically validate

If you want belt and braces then you can use software like this to extract your Win 10 key.

In reply to a post by Oldjim:

If you have already updated to Win 10

No I'm stiull Win8.1 and will lleave that on the old HD. One of the things I wondered about was, what if I put my old HD back will it still work as normal?

I believe that if you do a clean install using the Win8 key it will work http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install...
However once you have used the Win 8 key for Win 10 I don't believe that you can go back to Win 8

In reply to a post by ian72:

If you want belt and braces then you can use software like this to extract your Win 10 key.

Thanks v.much. I'd already got it on my system but didn't realise it offered this,
Microsoft - Windows 8.1 (x64) 00179-60488-xxxxx (Key: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx)

Now to decide about whether to go ssd, hybrid or standard hmmmm...

In reply to a post by Oldjim:

However once you have used the Win 8 key for Win 10 I don't believe that you can go back to Win 8

You think that MS would actively cripple my OS after all the installed hardware would be no different to that expected by Windows as it booted. Is part ot every boot process a 'call home' to see if everything is OK.

checking - I was wrong - you can http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-downgr...

Now to decide about whether to go ssd, hybrid or standard hmmmm...

SSD, I bought one recently 500gb Crucial MX200, for £130, and I love the speed.

In reply to a post by longedge:

In reply to a post by ian72:

If you want belt and braces then you can use software like this to extract your Win 10 key.

Thanks v.much. I'd already got it on my system but didn't realise it offered this,
Microsoft - Windows 8.1 (x64) 00179-60488-xxxxx (Key: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx)

Now to decide about whether to go ssd, hybrid or standard hmmmm...

Go SSD, you will absolutely not regret it when you see the speed things respond.

In reply to a post by longedge:

Thanks v.much. I'd already got it on my system but didn't realise it offered this,
Microsoft - Windows 8.1 (x64) 00179-60488-xxxxx (Key: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx)

Now to decide about whether to go ssd, hybrid or standard hmmmm...

Hybrid is ok, but i did not find a lot of difference in speed to a standard drive, SSD is the way to go, but you do pay a fair bit.
If you do not need a lot of storage, then The Corsair 240GB Neutron XT is about £80, I got one this week and it works well iot is the top end of the Corsair range, I got it fromAmazon here

There is a larger version if you want to pay the extra. Weston Digital used to sell a drive that was 120GB ssd and 1TB mechanical drive in the same 2.5inch unit. They would come up on the computer as drive c for the SSD and D for the other drive. Useful for laptops, but I can not see them now, so I take it they did not sell very well. Shame really as they was ideal for laptops.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by longedge:

Thanks v.much. I'd already got it on my system but didn't realise it offered this,
Microsoft - Windows 8.1 (x64) 00179-60488-xxxxx (Key: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx)

Now to decide about whether to go ssd, hybrid or standard hmmmm...

Hybrid is ok, but i did not find a lot of difference in speed to a standard drive, SSD is the way to go, but you do pay a fair bit.
If you do not need a lot of storage, then The Corsair 240GB Neutron XT is about £80, I got one this week and it works well iot is the top end of the Corsair range, I got it fromAmazon here

There is a larger version if you want to pay the extra. Weston Digital used to sell a drive that was 120GB ssd and 1TB mechanical drive in the same 2.5inch unit. They would come up on the computer as drive c for the SSD and D for the other drive. Useful for laptops, but I can not see them now, so I take it they did not sell very well. Shame really as they was ideal for laptops.

Go for an SSD, you can get a 500GB for about £120, well worth the money and smaller drives are...well, small and you will soon run out of space.

Can't see there is any reason to think about it. SSD is the only logical option. A week or so ago Dabs had on offer a 480gb Sandisk SSD for £79.99 inc delivery. From experience, hybrid are a total waste of time, not even worth considering.

In reply to a post by rogerfp:

Can't see there is any reason to think about it. SSD is the only logical option. A week or so ago Dabs had on offer a 480gb Sandisk SSD for £79.99 inc delivery. From experience, hybrid are a total waste of time, not even worth considering.

Hybrid is a go between, if you have a laptop and you want as lot of storage then Then hybrid is the only way if you want a bit of extra speed, saying that I did not find the speed difference large enough to justify the extra cost.
As you said you can get 480GB SSd drives cheap now and for a laptop the Sandisk would be fine.
The reason why i went for a 240Gb is because I use a desktop so I all I need is enough room on the SSd to store the software and OS and 240GB is more than enough for that. I have got a 2TB drive for my main files.

Two days of smashing my head against the wall!! It's a Sony Vaio laptop and it's been developing little niggling probs for a while e.g. some USB devices don't work when plugged in irrespective of which port I use but after a reboot they work fine - the optical drive is borked, it won't boot from USB etc etc.

Anyway, I thought I'd try Win 10. I remembered what a pain it was re-installing everything last time I did a clean install so I thought buy a second drive (ended up buying a hybrid), clone the original onto it and play around with the original safe.

I've just removed the new drive and replaced the old one for the third time. No matter what I try the cloned drive is 'detected' and the laptop refuses to boot. The last try was a full disk clone all the partitions looked the same in terms of type and size and the contents of each partition looked the same as the original.

It's 'oh sod it' time now and I've ordered an external enclosure and the new drive is going in that and this afternoon I'm off to have a look round Currys at new laptops - think I'll have a late Christmas present from me.

You need to rebuild the boot files after a clone, I found out the hard way when I got an SSD.

You really shouldn't need to if you clone the whole disk (rather than just a partition). I've done this a number of times with no problem.

it is possible that the old drive had a hidden boot partition which wasn't cloned
Have you tried a repair option from the widows disc

What software do you use to clone,. in fact how do you clone if you can't boot from USB?

When i cloned my SSD to the new SSd I first used Corsair own software, but that failed halfway through for some reason, i then decided to try Macrium Reflect and that did the job when I found out how to expand the partition

that using Windows 8.1 and not 10

I'm not sure but I think this might be a 'Sony' thing. I've found dozens of posts from people with the same issue but no definitive answer and so far nothing worked for me. Anyway I've messed about with bios Boot Order, UEFI/MBR, Secure Boot and I'm still no further forward with the old laptop. One of my reservations about doing things a more normal way is that some of the software I use regularly dates back a long way and I just don't want the hassle of learning new packages (I'm still trying to get used to MS Office ribbon!). Until I decide on a replacement I'm managing with an USB CD Drive which sometimes works and sometimes needs a system re-boot to be recognised.

p.s. I've been trying to clone a 1TB disc with 5 partitions (3 recovery, 1 efi and the main partition) Win8.1 onto a new 1TB drive using Paragon HD Manager suite.

Edited by longedge (Mon 18-Jan-16 10:16:51)