Here is my problem. My Dell Inspiron preloaded Windows 8 laptop crashed and the problem was the hard drive. I was 3 weeks out of warranty, so I went and purchased a hard drive from Best Buy and put it in. I did not have a disc from dell when I received the laptop, it just has the Windows 8 Home sticker on the bottom of the laptop. I did a little research and found that all of this was correct, that they are now "injecting" the Product keys into the system board.
Although I was out of warranty, I told Dell that I needed the software to install windows 8 back on the drive. They said that they would do that. So the other day, I received 2 discs. One was the drivers for the Inspiron 15 and the other was Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit with SP1. OK, so now I am confused. I purchased the laptop with Windows 8 x64 Home premium. So is this a mistake that Dell sent me the Windows 7 Home Premium disc, or am I supposed to load that and then upgrade to Windows 8 and 8.1 from there? I can't find any information on the Dell site or Google that gives instructions on loading Windows 8 from Windows 7 other than the ones that want a 25 digit Product Key. I don't have a product key and these Dell people should know that! Anyone else have this issue or know how I can get my laptop going again? Thanks for any help.
Although I was out of warranty, I told Dell that I needed the software to install windows 8 back on the drive. They said that they would do that. So the other day, I received 2 discs. One was the drivers for the Inspiron 15 and the other was Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit with SP1. OK, so now I am confused. I purchased the laptop with Windows 8 x64 Home premium. So is this a mistake that Dell sent me the Windows 7 Home Premium disc, or am I supposed to load that and then upgrade to Windows 8 and 8.1 from there? I can't find any information on the Dell site or Google that gives instructions on loading Windows 8 from Windows 7 other than the ones that want a 25 digit Product Key. I don't have a product key and these Dell people should know that! Anyone else have this issue or know how I can get my laptop going again? Thanks for any help.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Trying to get back to 8.1
- Computer type
- Laptop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- Dell Inspiron 15 3521
- CPU
- Intel I3
- Motherboard
- Intel
- Memory
- 8 Gb
- Graphics Card(s)
- Intel
- Browser
- IE
- Antivirus
- Symantec