New HDD Installation

Hi There,

About 3 months ago my HDD in my Toshiba laptop decided to fail on me and was unreadable. So i have since purchased a new HDD and managed to reinstall windows 8.1.

Now when i first brought my laptop it had Windows 7 on it and i purchased an upgrade to Windows 8 when they had the offer on for £29 (i think it was) to upgrade to windows 8. Then i updated it to 8.1 when that became available. Now i used the guide to install windows from this site, link is below:

eightforums.com/tutorials/2299-clean-install-windows-8-a.html

As i no longer have the original email from Microsoft containing my new product key for the upgrade, i learned that windows 8 will activate itself due to the key being in the OEM but this has not happened and so i have used the showkey1.1.vbs application which searches for the key and its showing as 'Key not found' next to the OEM Key.

Any help would be greatly received

Kind Regards

Mark

the oem key will be a windows 7 flag, since that is what the PC came with
the installed key will be the windows 8/8.1 key

here is the latest Showkey download > http://www.tenforums.com/attachment...869-showkey-showkeyplus-version-1.0.5655-.zip

Thank you for your response,

Now ive run that application on my laptop but the installed key it states on the pop up box is the key i inputted which it tells you to in the guide i followed and not the original windows 8 key when i upgraded. Then below that it says OEM Key - Windows 7 OEM marker present in firmware. So does this mean i will have to roll back to windows 7 before i can upgrade to windows 10??

regards

Mark

the installed key it states on the pop up box is the key i inputted which it tells you to in the guide i followed

Click to expand...

That was a generic key..
And if you do not have a copy of your windows 8/8.1 product key, laying around
then, yes you will have to reinstall windows 7 in order to upgrade to windows 10

Thank you for your help, i am now installing windows 7 and hopefully will sort it.