Tricky-Ricky Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 Thought i would take advantage of the free upgrade anyway did my win 7 laptop and had no problems, did the wife's win 8 and initially no problems, now 10 days later her laptop is very slow refuses to open files/applications, or takes forever, screen goes blank, finally managed to get it to boot in safe mode, but its still the same, so i can run any recovery/repair applications, did wonder if it was a possessor issue, but now think its just windows, trouble is a cant even do anything about getting it to revert to win 8, so has anyone got any ideas before i throw it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annabella Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 Thought i would take advantage of the free upgrade anyway did my win 7 laptop and had no problems, did the wife's win 8 and initially no problems, now 10 days later her laptop is very slow refuses to open files/applications, or takes forever, screen goes blank, finally managed to get it to boot in safe mode, but its still the same, so i can run any recovery/repair applications, did wonder if it was a possessor issue, but now think its just windows, trouble is a cant even do anything about getting it to revert to win 8, so has anyone got any ideas before i throw it? Get your data off and re-install win 8, make sure same version as original, eg win 8.0 or 8.1 home or pro. You can download burnable iso from ms on another pc. Does it feel like it gets hot? Have you ran a hard drive diag? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tricky-Ricky Posted August 7, 2016 Author Share Posted August 7, 2016 That's the trouble, i cant run anything, and all i have managed to open has taken half hour or more and then goes nowhere, its not very hot, in fact mine runs very hot and i am waiting for that to die. Anyway i was hoping to avoid pulling the hard drive, but its looking like that's the only option, if i pull alls the needed data and wipe the drive and download a win 8 image to the HDD will the laptop see it and boot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ric Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 Take out the hard drive and put it in a USB caddy, scan it, repair it, take off all your files/documents then try again. If it's still the same, format the drive and re-install windows 10 from scratch, you'll have a backup of all your stuff and it's hunkydory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 I'm not sure your Windows 8 product key will still work. I've tried to find out the answer to that myself, but haven't found a reliable answer yet. In my case, I'm just curious so I haven't pursued it much. It might be that after upgrading for free to Win10, your Win8 entitlement is destroyed. I don't know what your skill level is, but whatever you do will require a certain amount of familiarity/skill. In your position, I would make an off-disk copy of all my documents, photos, videos, any other user files. If Windows is too slow to allow this, I'd download an Ubuntu desktop installation ISO using another computer. These ubuntu installation images allow you to run Ubuntu (which is pretty user-friendly these days) from the USB/DVD, without making any changes to your hard disk. It gives you acces to your hard disk, therefore you can use that to copy files from the hard disk to a second USB drive in your computer. Having made a backup of all the user data, I would then make an image of the hard drive using Macrium Reflect (free software). You don't need to do this, but if the next step stuffs things up or doesn't help, then it means you can the computer back to exactly how it was within about an hour. Finally, I'd do a clean installation of Windows 10. Doing an upgrade over the top of an existing Windows OS is notorious for giving you a poorly-performing Windows. You'll need the Windows 10 product key that you've been assigned I think (or maybe your old Windows 8 product key will be recognised by Microsoft's authentication servers, googling required unfortunately). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 I'm not sure your Windows 8 product key will still work. I've tried to find out the answer to that myself, but haven't found a reliable answer yet. In my case, I'm just curious so I haven't pursued it much. It might be that after upgrading for free to Win10, your Win8 entitlement is destroyed. I don't think that's the case is it? There's an uninstall guide here - http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-and-downgrade-to-windows-7-or-8.1/ Personally I've found Win10 to be excellent and performs very well on ageing kit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annabella Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 That's the trouble, i cant run anything, and all i have managed to open has taken half hour or more and then goes nowhere, its not very hot, in fact mine runs very hot and i am waiting for that to die. Anyway i was hoping to avoid pulling the hard drive, but its looking like that's the only option, if i pull alls the needed data and wipe the drive and download a win 8 image to the HDD will the laptop see it and boot? Take the drive and buy an external USB £10 caddy. Get your data off, may take time to take ownership of the user account on the receiving laptop/PC, stick the drive back in after. Then run a scan of the drive with a bootable HDD diag eg IBM dft, from hitachi, or WDdiag from western digital. Or seatools (now same company seagate as WD). See what that brings. If the drive comes back ok then re-install to it. The windows 8 licence key should still be in the bios.... If you can run anything as is there is a package called keyfinder, that will give you your windows 10 product key for re-install to windows 10 if need be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 I don't think that's the case is it? There's an uninstall guide here - http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-and-downgrade-to-windows-7-or-8.1/ Personally I've found Win10 to be excellent and performs very well on ageing kit. I dunno. This link suggests Win8 will no longer be installable with the license, but it's not gospel: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2776018/windows-key-upgrading.html Also, my link refers to someone who wants to use both (which definitely won't be allowed if MS have any sense, it's surely one or the other!), and that's not what the OP is trying to do. So I'm none the wiser really. Does the downgrade still work after the 29th July 2016 cut-off? I agree about Win10: I've upgraded 2 computers from Win7, and overall it's OK - speed seems pretty good, especially for an upgrade overlaid on an older OS. Take the drive and buy an external USB £10 caddy. Get your data off, may take time to take ownership of the user account on the receiving laptop/PC, stick the drive back in after. Then run a scan of the drive with a bootable HDD diag eg IBM dft, from hitachi, or WDdiag from western digital. Or seatools (now same company seagate as WD). See what that brings. If the drive comes back ok then re-install to it. The windows 8 licence key should still be in the bios.... If you can run anything as is there is a package called keyfinder, that will give you your windows 10 product key for re-install to windows 10 if need be. Does Win10 upgrade actually use a product key? I know I'm contradicting my previous post, but I think MS have moved away from license keys where possible: too open to abuse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angarak Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 Me personally, Id spend £22 on a legit Windows 10 Pro key and install it from fresh, it'll be quicker than upgrading and less hassle. https://softwaregeeks.co.uk/product/windows-10-pro/ Ive bought several keys from the above site and they all activated windows without issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annabella Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 I dunno. This link suggests Win8 will no longer be installable with the license, but it's not gospel: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2776018/windows-key-upgrading.html Also, my link refers to someone who wants to use both (which definitely won't be allowed if MS have any sense, it's surely one or the other!), and that's not what the OP is trying to do. So I'm none the wiser really. Does the downgrade still work after the 29th July 2016 cut-off? I agree about Win10: I've upgraded 2 computers from Win7, and overall it's OK - speed seems pretty good, especially for an upgrade overlaid on an older OS. Does Win10 upgrade actually use a product key? I know I'm contradicting my previous post, but I think MS have moved away from license keys where possible: too open to abuse. Yes if you use keyfinder it will tell you your legit licence key, so you can reinstall in the future. Whether the old win 8 code works or not isnt the debate, in my experience it will, like win 7 codes on coa stickers if you wish to revert. The op needs to find his laptop fault. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tricky-Ricky Posted August 8, 2016 Author Share Posted August 8, 2016 Well this has been a real pain, removed the HDD and ran some checks on another PC, no errors etc, so put it back and spent the best part of the day waiting for it to respond to each commend, it turns out that the disc read/write activity is running at 100%, so i had a look and managed to disable the Avast updater, which helped, but its still running really slow and locks up, but i really cant see just what the culprit is that using so much disc activity, not really sure just what to stop/end using cmd commands? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hitbox Junkie Posted August 8, 2016 Share Posted August 8, 2016 Well this has been a real pain, removed the HDD and ran some checks on another PC, no errors etc, so put it back and spent the best part of the day waiting for it to respond to each commend, it turns out that the disc read/write activity is running at 100%, so i had a look and managed to disable the Avast updater, which helped, but its still running really slow and locks up, but i really cant see just what the culprit is that using so much disc activity, not really sure just what to stop/end using cmd commands? I'd take the hdd out install previous windows on it from a different pc and then be done with win10 sounds like something is chocking it big time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annabella Posted August 8, 2016 Share Posted August 8, 2016 Well this has been a real pain, removed the HDD and ran some checks on another PC, no errors etc, so put it back and spent the best part of the day waiting for it to respond to each commend, it turns out that the disc read/write activity is running at 100%, so i had a look and managed to disable the Avast updater, which helped, but its still running really slow and locks up, but i really cant see just what the culprit is that using so much disc activity, not really sure just what to stop/end using cmd commands? Set windows update to manual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tricky-Ricky Posted August 9, 2016 Author Share Posted August 9, 2016 After a real fight i managed to stop enough services to be able to cut the disc usage, so i could access the revert to windows 8 option, so its now back on that and seems to be working ..........for now, so many thanks for all the input and help guys, at least i have learnt a little more about fixing yet another computer problem, definitely prefer fixing cars...at least they don't fight you all the way...well mostly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annabella Posted August 9, 2016 Share Posted August 9, 2016 Swap your HDD to an SSD, that'll speed up any pc no end, use something like Acronis clone disk to clone one to the other and bob's your mothers brother. SSD's run upto 20 times faster than traditional Hard disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 9, 2016 Share Posted August 9, 2016 Yes if you use keyfinder it will tell you your legit licence key, so you can reinstall in the future. I thought that too...didn't work when I tried it. Not had chance to work out why yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annabella Posted August 9, 2016 Share Posted August 9, 2016 That definitely should work, you have to make sure you re-install to exact same version of windows that was installed ie win 10 Home or Pro and 32 or 64 bit. Don't know if it has to be exact same build if you get me. http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2015/07/30/windows-10-updating-reinstalling-and-activation-guide-essential-advice-to-avoid-problems/#570a54871454 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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