- Oct 9, 2002
- 28,298
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A coworker needed me to replace a bad hard drive in an HP 15-d074nr "notebook." - that's in quotes because the weak internal hardware seems more like a tablet than a notebook. It has a tiny little battery, but it's not exactly a netbook because it has an optical disk drive. Though I don't see any stickers, I'm pretty sure it has an AMD APU.
The product key is built into the BIOS, I know that it's not a straightforward process to reinstall Windows 8.1 - I do have a Windows 8.1 install disc that I made many months ago, and I'm told the product key will determine which version (Pro, Home, etc) installs. I could not enter any kind of BIOS Setup menu to find the product key. The closest thing I could do was wait for boot to fail and press F2 to access a menu with 3 diagnostic options for testing memory, hard drive, etc.
I tried to find out if there was a trick to it. HP's site asks for the "product number," which is a bit worn and hard to make out. I guessed "F5Y37UA#ABA" -- but the site said Windows 8.1 was "not supported" on that device --??
I had to Google a generic key so I could install and run a utility to obtain the original product key. I want to delete partitions and reinstall using that key, but there's no way to boot to the install disc anymore (damn UEFI!). On boot, it instantly goes to the UEFI loading screen and doesn't respond to any of the F-keys I've tried. The generic key I used installed the Pro edition, so I'm pretty sure I can't just re-enter the key in the Activation Wizard.
From within Windows, I did the autorun from the install media. It won't let me type the last character of the key (it says "1 character remaining"). It lets me type some characters, but not the final character that I need to type. I checked the rest of the product key over and over, compared to the picture I snapped when the utility was running. It will not allow me to enter that key.
Halp?
The product key is built into the BIOS, I know that it's not a straightforward process to reinstall Windows 8.1 - I do have a Windows 8.1 install disc that I made many months ago, and I'm told the product key will determine which version (Pro, Home, etc) installs. I could not enter any kind of BIOS Setup menu to find the product key. The closest thing I could do was wait for boot to fail and press F2 to access a menu with 3 diagnostic options for testing memory, hard drive, etc.
I tried to find out if there was a trick to it. HP's site asks for the "product number," which is a bit worn and hard to make out. I guessed "F5Y37UA#ABA" -- but the site said Windows 8.1 was "not supported" on that device --??
I had to Google a generic key so I could install and run a utility to obtain the original product key. I want to delete partitions and reinstall using that key, but there's no way to boot to the install disc anymore (damn UEFI!). On boot, it instantly goes to the UEFI loading screen and doesn't respond to any of the F-keys I've tried. The generic key I used installed the Pro edition, so I'm pretty sure I can't just re-enter the key in the Activation Wizard.
From within Windows, I did the autorun from the install media. It won't let me type the last character of the key (it says "1 character remaining"). It lets me type some characters, but not the final character that I need to type. I checked the rest of the product key over and over, compared to the picture I snapped when the utility was running. It will not allow me to enter that key.
Halp?