Windows 10: Activate Windows 10

in that case I am leaving all as is. and wait till I have some more money to buy another key

said in post I lost all in ransomeware .. which included 1000 photographs being process and even no time to back these up.

 

Did either of the laptops come with Windows pre-installed on them from the factory?

 

yea both from toshiba, and both screwed up at the same time, I checked everything Toshiba wanted £80 for two start up drives . Otherwise they offered no help what so ever I took the hard drives out of both of them and tried them in a external housing and both were dead as a doornail. no lights could not even hear the spin. Again spent 45 minutes with Toshiba, they would not do anything without the receipt of purchase, and to this day we still have not found it.

They would not accept an email from the company , added to new drives one in each and bought the key here we are back

 

up date. the key I bought for win 8 is valid checked with Microsoft. getting another key from them for the other machine. explained situation . support worker was fine fine, but not that impressed with toshiba. for not offering more help. Lesson keep receipts for no matter what in a safe place.

 

If both of the laptops came from Toshiba with Windows 8/8.1 installed on them, then the Windows 8 product keys are stored in bios and there is no need for you to keep purchasing external product keys.

 

The drive were both screwed, I did try and message you but not enough posts, going to slap them in a external caddies and try to recover what I can .. but had to go with new drives . ....

 

The hard drives don't matter. The Windows 8 product keys are stored in the bios of the computer. A clean install of Windows 8.1 on a new hard drive will read the product key store in bios.

 

Starting in Windows 10 Insider Preview build 10565:

Device activation improvements: Microsoft has received a lot of feedback from Insiders on making it easier to activate Windows 10 on devices that take advantage of the free upgrade offer to genuine Windows by using existing Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 product keys. If you install this build of the Windows 10 Insider Preview on a PC and it doesn’t automatically activate, you can enter the product key from Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 used to activate the prior Windows version on the same device to activate Windows 10 by going to Settings > Update & security > Activation and selecting Change Product Key. If you do a clean install of Windows 10 by booting off the media, you can also enter the product key from prior Windows versions on qualifying devices during setup. Refer to the Insider Hub for more information on these activation improvements including requirements.

 

This tutorial has been updated to add OPTION FOUR for how to activate Windows 10 by phone. *Smile

Activate Windows 10