Windows 10: Formatted My Hard Drive and Lost Activation Key

My roommate had me fix his computer that had gotten corrupted, the only fix we could get to work out was to completely format his hard drive down to nothing. After rebooting, we were given a prompt to reinstall windows, so I went to the appropriate Microsoft website and downloaded the file to a flash drive, and reinstalled windows from there.

Now it's saying that Windows is not activated. I went to this Microsoft support article to find the product activation code, it says that the code is incorrect. I've been trying just about everything to get this computer up and running but I don't really know what else to try. Did I accidentally delete the important information from the PC when I formatted the drive? It's up and running now, I'd just really like to activate windows. Thank you for any help you can provide!

:)

 

How To Format A Write Protected Flash Memory ?

¿You already tried this one?...

Run CMD


1. diskpart
2. list disk

Then in the 3º step, put the correct number of disk in the list for the usb flash (if it's listed in disk 3, then you'll have to write select disk 3).

2. select disk #
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

with that commands you will format the flash drive in fat32, if you have a large drive you can select also "format fs=ntfs" in step 7.

good luck!

 

How to Partiton a Hard Drive in Vista

This is a way to get Vista to see another hard drive that is not associated with the OS. There is some times when your new hdd doesn't seem to want to work well with Vista. But, there is a solution in it.

Open the Computer Management By doing these steps.

• Click on the Start Button
• Click on Control Panel
• Click Administrative Tools
• Double click on Computer Management

You are now in the Navigation panel of the Computer Management.
When in Computer Management, you then have to allow the new drive to be recognized.

• Double click on Storage
• Double click on Disk Management

Now in the middle of your screen there is the layout of the Disk Drives that you have. The drives that are partitioned will show by the drive lettering. The others will just show up as having nothing at all in them. Below that there will be the Disk drives that are installed into the computer. You'll see that the primary one will all ways read as "Disk 0". Then you will have Disk 1 and so on. Under the Disks there will also see your CD-Rom drives.. If there is more then one, it will be labeled the same as Disk drives..

On to the Partitioning of the drive in question.

• Right Click on the drive
• Click to format the drive or Enable Volume. There will be a series of windows that open up. This is Vista's formatting. Just go threw the windows, and make sure everything is the way you want it to happen.
• Once the formatting is done, will take some time depending on the drive size.
• Right click on the drive
• Click on Mark the Partition as Active

After you have done those steps, The drive will be up and running threw Vista.



:Side Notes:
If you are not the Administer to the Os, then you will have to enable it..
You may also want to redo the drive lettering of it all. But, I really don't see a reason to do so. If you do, you have to redo drive paths and so forth.. A lot of work on something so small...

 

How to partially format a hard drive?

I just installed Windows 8 on my computer. I placed the files I wanted to keep on an external hard drive prior to the installation, that is fine. However, I though that the process would format the computer's hard drive, which it did not.

Is it possible to format my hard drive in order to keep only what is related to Windows 8?
If not, can I format the whole thing and re-use the same Windows 8 key?

Thanks for your help