After nearly a year of squeeling the HD finally gave up in most respects. No surprise. It boots, but won't recognize a mouse correctly or most keyboard actions, so I can't type or make selections of icons, etc. so am stuck as far as fixing as concerned. Using the HP startup page I have been able to get to the Windows 10 restore function three times, and all fail eventually. HP also returns a report of HD problems, but solutions will not complete. It is 8 years old so I need to replace the HD or the desktop, which I am willing to do. My concern is my installed Win 10 and how can I be certain to be able to do the upcoming Win 10 upgrade due Aug. 2. How to I get my current Win 10 installed on my new drive and retain my ability to get the free upgrade? I have the Win 10 Pro ISO that I burned when upgrading from Win 7. I do have a fairly recent Image of the drive on my Transcend external drive. Suggestions appreciated.
If you have already done the free upgrade your PC has a digital entitlement stored on the Microsoft activation server. Replace the hard drive and do a clean install of 10 Pro. When asked for a key click skip. It should activate with the digital entitlement. If it doesn't, do a phone activation and just tell them you had to replace the hard drive.
Many thanks for that info! I'll order a replacement drive today.
or do the image restore from the external HDD (after you install the new HDD/SSD). That's why we do backups!I do have a fairly recent Image of the drive on my Transcend external drive. Suggestions appreciated.
Thanks for that as well. Just don't want to overlook an option as Murphy's Law is very active in my life.
If W10 on your hard drive still functioning, you can use Macrium Reflect to image your system and store the backup on a second drive. Use the option "Create an image of the partitions required to backup/restore Windows". Ensure you check the verify box and create a Macrium rescue USB disk. Then install your new disk and restore the backup image from the rescue disc. See my guide here for more details Else, you might prefer to do a clean install as someone suggested.
I swapped the hard disk for a SSD in my laptop a few months ago and W10 had already activated when I checked it.
Thanks Steve. I have a Macrium image to use. Unfortunately the bootup never gives me a fully functional keyboard or mouse so I have no way to do additional images, etc. On the backup external drive I have a .mrimg and a .xml file to use for restoring. I haven't used such before, but seem to remember that the .xml file is 'clickable'. Is that correct? Swapping drives is new to me also so once I install and hookup the new drive into my desktop, what should I expect to see when I first turn it on? I'll have the external backup drive plugged into a USB port already. (I also have a Macrium bootable "rescue"media dvd as well as my first Win10 ISO). Your guidance at this point is appreciated. I tried the rescue disk and my disk drives don't recognize anything so are probably not fully installed, like the keyboard and the mouse.
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You should boot from the rescue media, browse to find your image backup then restore it to the new disk. See
Just what I needed to hear. Many thanks.
