Can I reinstall Windows 10 from an image backup? What do I use to boot ?

[chubby]

Can I reinstall Windows 10 from an image backup? What do I use to boot ?

I'm having no luck cloning, but need the current HD I'm using on windows 10 , so I want to use Macrium Reflect to image the HD, and then Macrium Recovery DVD to boot and format/reinstall the HD to a 2nd HD via an Image I'm going to backup to a 3rd USB HD.

Is this possible, or can I only 'recover' with an 'image' not reformat and reinstall ?

and what do I need to boot from to then access the image on the USB HD ? Macrium's recover disk, or some windows recovery type tool ,that windows 10 can burn ?

thanks

[RichCor]

Macrium Reflect can be used to image a disc or partitions of a disc.

You can then use the same application to:

1. 'view' and potentially 'retrieve' select files;

2. write (recover) non-boot partitions of a drive; or

3. use Rescue Media that you've created (or acquired) to boot your PC from to write/restore a previous image of a booting partition.

(you must use the 'bootable' Rescue Media if you want/need to do option #3.

When I went to create the Rescue Media the option failed because the PE version of Windows would not download for me. I had to search the Internet for an .iso file that someone else created and then use that to create a working boot USB flash drive, then boot off the flash and access the Rescue Media version of Macrium Reflect and rewrite the bootable partitions of my laptop's hard drive with a previously created Macrium image.

To be clear, Macrium Reflect is only used to create image of a drive partition or partitions, then recover individual files, or the image can be used to rewrite the (or a) partition to the state of when the original image was made. (Even if that 'image' was made seconds after your OS was installed, or seconds ago with a system populated with applications and drivers).

It's not used to 'reinstall' the OS.

[chubby]

well lets say I was to do #1 below on my current HD running windows 10 while live, after I click "recovery" what happens? does the system reboot?

I would like to take the HD #1 image, and "recover" to a new HD #2 , that would have to probably be re-formatted as it goes along

To restore using the Recovery Control Panel (recommended)

If your computer is still working and you can access Control Panel, or if you want to restore your system image backup onto a different computer, follow these steps:

1. Open Recovery by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type recovery, and then click Recovery.

2.Click Advanced recovery methods.

3.Click Use a system image you created earlier to recover your computer, and then follow the steps.

[chubby]

can I make a bootable Windows Recovery DVD from Windows 10, and boot with THAT. And then after having booted off the DVD, use a USB HD external with the image on it to install onto a HD that would need to be formatted in the "restore image" process?

[thedemon]

can I make a bootable Windows Recovery DVD from Windows 10, and boot with THAT. And then after having booted off the DVD, use a USB HD external with the image on it to install onto a HD that would need to be formatted in the "restore image" process?

Yes but you don't need to create a recovery DVD just for booting. You can boot from your install media (USB or DVD) and on the 2nd screen instead of selecting "Install now", click on "Repair your computer". From there you will have several options including restore image.

To use Windows built-in image restore, you would need to have previously created a system image from Control Panel/File History.

[chubby]

looks like after win7, one can only make backup USB drives to boot from ?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-usb-recovery-drive

[chubby]

this is the gibberish Macrium spits out tells me to do chkdsk /r , which I do which fixes nothing ......sigh

<br> <br>

List of created shadow copies: <br>

<br>

Querying all shadow copies with the SnapshotSetID {56a53266-d2dc-47ab-8116-a57ba20707c1} ...

<br>

* SNAPSHOT ID = {6b50b3f2-0c27-4ef2-84f2-58b231b230d7} ... <br>

- Shadow copy Set: {56a53266-d2dc-47ab-8116-a57ba20707c1} <br>

- Original count of shadow copies = 1 <br>

- Original Volume name: \\?\Volume{4bbc3022-3bf3-11e5-9ab9-806e6f6e6963}\ [C:\] <br>

- Creation Time: 10/6/2015 12:20:27 AM <br>

- Shadow copy device name: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy9 <br>

- Originating machine: <br>

- Service machine: <br>

- Not Exposed <br>

- Provider id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5} <br>

- Attributes: Auto_Release Differential <br>

<br> <br>

Windows Events <br>

***************************** <br>

Date 10/6/2015 12:20:21 AM <br>

Type Error <br>

Event 513 <br>

Source Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2 <br>

<br>

Cryptographic Services failed while processing the OnIdentity() call in the System Writer Object. <br>

<br>

Details: <br>

AddLegacyDriverFiles: Unable to back up image of binary Microsoft Link-Layer Discovery Protocol. <br>

<br>

System Error: <br>

Access is denied. <br>

Edited October 7, 2015 by chubby

[thedemon]

Your op and subsequent posts are confusing. What exactly do you want to do?

1 - Reinstall Windows 10? (as in clean install - starting from scratch)

2 - Clone an existing Windows 10 installation from 1 HDD to another HDD?

[WhizBang]

Your op and subsequent posts are confusing. What exactly do you want to do?

1 - Reinstall Windows 10? (as in clean install - starting from scratch)

2 - Clone an existing Windows 10 installation from 1 HDD to another HDD?

I agree, reading his posts is very confusing. It would also help if he would use the return key to beak things up into easily digestable paragraphs, such as you have done.

I think, but am not sure, that he wants to do your option 2.

Myy suggestion would be for him to enlist a friend who is good at computers to help him.

[chubby]

OK thanks for asking

I have 2 HDs, a DISK HD , and a SSD. Last year I cloned the DISK HD to the SSD as Win7, on the SSD, I then upgraded to Win10. NOW, I am building a new system, and want to Clone/Image the SSD Win10 back -> the DISK DRIVE as Win10 , overwriting what was left on the original DISK HD (so that I can use the new SSD in a new system, but still have a bootable backup initially, though, later I may salvage the DISK drive into the new system, as a backup to the new SSD OS )...... make sense?

I've got a series of issues. One is that with the BIOS setup as SATA , my DISK HD is not being recognized by Win10 ; so I gave up on trying to clone the SSD directly, after many hours of plugging / replugging the SATA headers, and also trying to engage AHCI, as initially Win10 did show both HDs (though, Macrium failed to clone when I attempted it). after switching from SATA back to AHCI, I was getting 'unable to find boot device" , so have given up on AHCI, but am assuming that the BIOS set as SATA should allow both HDs to be seen by WIN10 ?

My 1st choice would be to directly clone the SSD back to the DISK drive, but since that is failing I'm trying to work around, by writing an image to a 1TB USB HD, however, it is running out of space, so what I don't know is how much space is required for an image to be written, as the SSD is also 1TB, though it has 2-3 partitions.

I am also unclear if this approach will even work, where, I write the SSD image to the USB HD, unplug the SSD, plug in the DISK HD , and boot off DVD and restore the image via USB to the DISK HD

is this clearer now ? thanks

[chubby]

when i try image the SSD with Macrium to the USB HD I also get MFT corrupt- Error Code = 6 . please run 'chkdsk /r' ; which i've done to no avail, on the SSD.

.....all that seems left is to use the Windows Image System to make an image to the USB Drive, but I fear that may be less desirable than using Macrium to do the same thing and/or Clone directly ??

[chubby]

Operation 3 of 3

Hard Disk: 1

Drive Letter: N/A

File System: NTFS

Label:

Size: 450.0 MB

Free: 121.4 MB

Used: 328.6 MB

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting Image - Wednesday, October 07, 2015 14:47:54

Initializing

Destination Drive: My Passport (K:) - Free Space 852.28 GB

Free space threshold: Delete oldest backup sets when free space is less than 5.00 GB

Creating Volume Snapshot - Please Wait

Volume Snapshots Created

Analyzing file system on volume

Analyzing file system on volume C:

Analyzing file system on volume

Gathering Windows Events - Please Wait

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MFT corrupt - Error code = 6. Please run 'chkdsk /r'

[thedemon]

I am also unclear if this approach will even work, where, I write the SSD image to the USB HD, unplug the SSD, plug in the DISK HD , and boot off DVD and restore the image via USB to the DISK HD

Yes it will work with everything set correctly. That is the way I would do it using Windows built-in System Imaging.

If you are running out of space on your USB drive, use Disk Manager to shrink the volume on the SSD to as small as possible before creating the image.

What is the DVD that you are using to boot? I ask because you can't use the recovery environment from Win7 or Win8 to boot and recover a Win10 image

Are both the SSD and HDD set to MBR partitions? Or maybe the SSD has a GPT partition? You can't image from one to the other.

[chubby]

What is the DVD that you are using to boot? I ask because you can't use the recovery environment from Win7 or Win8 to boot and recover a Win10 image

.........I was able to make both a "recovery drive" onto a USB stick/drive AND a "system repair disk" ....which I plan on booting from....in Windows 10, using the old control panel tools ; along with the system image,

Are both the SSD and HDD set to MBR partitions? Or maybe the SSD has a GPT partition? You can't image from one to the other.

.......I don't plan on using the SSD , I plan on using the USB HD with the image (from the SSD) to reinstall to the HDD internal. So, does it matter how the SSD was setup when the image was created?

.....I don't know what will happen when I use the SSD image to write to a new previously used HDD, re: how it formats a MBR ; I don't know how to tell how the partitions are setup on the SSD, I can see there are 2-3 large partitions on the SSD in disk management, but don't know if /what that means re: MBR.....

 

I am also unclear if this approach will even work, where, I write the SSD image to the USB HD, unplug the SSD, plug in the DISK HD , and boot off DVD and restore the image via USB to the DISK HD

Yes it will work with everything set correctly. That is the way I would do it using Windows built-in System Imaging.

If you are running out of space on your USB drive, use Disk Manager to shrink the volume on the SSD to as small as possible before creating the image.

What is the DVD that you are using to boot? I ask because you can't use the recovery environment from Win7 or Win8 to boot and recover a Win10 image

Are both the SSD and HDD set to MBR partitions? Or maybe the SSD has a GPT partition? You can't image from one to the other.

 

[thedemon]

A couple more questions.

1 - If you set the SSD to AHCI in the BIOS, will it boot to Win10?

2 - Is it correct that you don't need to keep any data that is currently on the HDD you want to image to?

3 - Does the SSD contain only a single partition (apart from system partitions)? i.e. only C:\ drive?

4 - You have a USB HDD with enough free space to hold an image of the SSD?

With the answers to those questions I'll make some suggestions.

[RichCor]

when i try image the SSD with Macrium to the USB HD I also get MFT corrupt- Error Code = 6 . please run 'chkdsk /r' ; which i've done to no avail, on the SSD. .....all that seems left is to use the Windows Image System to make an image to the USB Drive, but I fear that may be less desirable than using Macrium to do the same thing and/or Clone directly ??

This error is a bit worrysome. Have you ever seen a similar 'drive access' error occurred using this 1TB SSD, or does it only occurred when using Macrium Reflect?

It may be an issue with how Macrium Reflect accesses the drive. It may be necessary to utilize some other 'drive clone' program/process to complete the transfer.

<...>

My 1st choice would be to directly clone the SSD back to the DISK drive, but since that is failing I'm trying to work around, by writing an image to a 1TB USB HD, however, it is running out of space, so what I don't know is how much space is required for an image to be written, as the SSD is also 1TB, though it has 2-3 partitions.

I am also unclear if this approach will even work, where, I write the SSD image to the USB HD, unplug the SSD, plug in the DISK HD , and boot off DVD and restore the image via USB to the DISK HD

If your SSD contains 3 partitions you need to be sure what each contains (C: D: System Reserved: ???)

From one of your posts, Macrium was detecting -- Hard Disk 1; NTFS; Size: 450.0 MB / 328.6 MB Used / 121.4 MB Free

So what are the other two partitions marked as? Is one a System Reserved or D: ??

It *should* be possible to have both the SSD and similar sized Hard Drive connected via SATA and do a direct "Clone" operation.

Otherwise you can use an alternate two-step method of creating a Drive "Image" to a third USB Drive, then using an alternate boot method to bring an OS up and access recovery tools to image the remaining Hard Drive into a bootable, functioning OS partition.

[chubby]

 

A couple more questions.

1 - If you set the SSD to AHCI in the BIOS, will it boot to Win10?

..........actually, at present NO, the SSD won't boot in AHCI, though, it did before, when it was just the SSD and the CD drive, and then initially when I connected Both the HDD, and the SSD for a while, but, after I removed the HDD, to use the SATA cable again on the CD , the SSD would no longer boot in AHCI mode in the BIOS, so I had to use SATA mode, and further connecting both the HDD and the SSD , also does not work in SATA mode.

2 - Is it correct that you don't need to keep any data that is currently on the HDD you want to image to?

......no I don't the HDD contains Win7, before I cloned to the SSD from the HDD, and later upgraded to win10 on the SSD

3 - Does the SSD contain only a single partition (apart from system partitions)? i.e. only C:\ drive?

.........the SSD is 1TB, the HDD is 1TB, the SSD is using 931GB, there are 4 partitions, created by Samsung Evo Magician auto-magically, Data 352MB, OS C: NTFS 837GB, 93GB unallocated (maybe being used for extending the life of the SSD, and 450MB "recovery partition" ; I did not manually create or change any of them, other than with the Magician GUI for the extended life portion.

4 - You have a USB HDD with enough free space to hold an image of the SSD?

.....well I've already made a Windows Image successfully to the USB, however trying to do it in Macrium tells me that an MFT is corrupt, which I assumed they meant the C:/SSD drive , though I believe I ran chkdsk on the USB HD as well .....it just worries me that Macrium is reporting an issue, though my plan is to disconnect the SSD, during trying to write to the HDD, which I'd assume removes any risk of unrecovery, as I should be able to just re-plug in the SSD and boot from it, if this doesn't work ?

With the answers to those questions I'll make some suggestions.

 

[chubby]

 

when i try image the SSD with Macrium to the USB HD I also get MFT corrupt- Error Code = 6 . please run 'chkdsk /r' ; which i've done to no avail, on the SSD. .....all that seems left is to use the Windows Image System to make an image to the USB Drive, but I fear that may be less desirable than using Macrium to do the same thing and/or Clone directly ??

This error is a bit worrysome. Have you ever seen a similar 'drive access' error occurred using this 1TB SSD, or does it only occurred when using Macrium Reflect?

.........only with Macrium, but maybe as alluded to by thedemon, this could be tied into why the system won't boot off AHCI, even with just the SSD, I've been trying to problem solve on my own , fwiw too, and it seems one CAN change a registry entry to "override" an AHCI error, but am a bit scared to do it that way:

QUOTE:

-----------SNIP

In that case, look for this in the registry instead in Windows 8.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\StartOverride

Change the 0 DWORD value from 3 to 0.

Reboot, and change your SATA controller to AHCI in BIOS.

You will boot into Windows with AHCI drivers.

---------SNIP

It may be an issue with how Macrium Reflect accesses the drive. It may be necessary to utilize some other 'drive clone' program/process to complete the transfer.

.......maybe so, but since I am unable to connect both the SSD and HDD simultaneously, I don't see a way, I actually put the HDD in an enclosure, and plugged it into USB , however, I seem a bit cursed in all this , as though win10 didn't show it as a drive letter, in hindsight maybe I should have looked in "disk management" to see if it was there...if I didn't.

<...>

My 1st choice would be to directly clone the SSD back to the DISK drive, but since that is failing I'm trying to work around, by writing an image to a 1TB USB HD, however, it is running out of space, so what I don't know is how much space is required for an image to be written, as the SSD is also 1TB, though it has 2-3 partitions.

I am also unclear if this approach will even work, where, I write the SSD image to the USB HD, unplug the SSD, plug in the DISK HD , and boot off DVD and restore the image via USB to the DISK HD

If your SSD contains 3 partitions you need to be sure what each contains (C: D: System Reserved: ???)

From one of your posts, Macrium was detecting -- Hard Disk 1; NTFS; Size: 450.0 MB / 328.6 MB Used / 121.4 MB Free

So what are the other two partitions marked as? Is one a System Reserved or D: ??

It *should* be possible to have both the SSD and similar sized Hard Drive connected via SATA and do a direct "Clone" operation.

Otherwise you can use an alternate two-step method of creating a Drive "Image" to a third USB Drive, then using an alternate boot method to bring an OS up and access recovery tools to image the remaining Hard Drive into a bootable, functioning OS partition.

 

........if it is not necessary to fix the AHCI to get two HDs "seen" and be able to boot, then what would stop the problem in just SATA mode, and perhaps I just forget about trying to fix the AHCI ; I start to lose track of what happens when I'm in SATA mode with HDD, and SSD, I believe i get "unable to find boot device" and there is no issue with Bios boot order.

......please see my answer to thedemon on the SSD partitions and sizes , cheers

[RichCor]

Since you have a drive enclosure, I would suggest pulling the SSD and placing it in that, install the HHD in the PC, set the BIOS back to normal setting, then either boot the enclosure or another Live/PE environment and try cloning again -- just make sure you're cloning in the DESIRED DIRECTION (Maybe remove all the partitions off the HDD before starting).

Note, other members on the board are experiencing issues with Magician running under Windows 10. Incompatible driver issues are causing problems.

You may find it quicker to reinstall Windows 10 and App environment to the HDD, then try to copy over your DATA separately. Though, keep trying with the clone. Just make sure the process is error free before calling it done.

[chubby]

hmm, so BIOS "normal setting" would be "SATA" or "AHCI" ? I wasn't aware I could "boot from a USB enclosure", I'm a bit afraid to remove the SSD again, as last time, after replugging the SSD into a different SATA header on the MB it, itself would not boot, I believe, because it seems to want to stay on the same SATA MB header that it is installed on? as pluggin and repluggin it into different headers seemed to fix it ( i was at the time, also plugging and repluggin the HDD into different headers, as in the BIOS there is some message about SATA needing to be on SATA 1-4 out of the 6 SATA headers ......

 

Since you have a drive enclosure, I would suggest pulling the SSD and placing it in that, install the HHD in the PC, set the BIOS back to normal setting, then either boot the enclosure or another Live/PE environment and try cloning again -- just make sure you're cloning in the DESIRED DIRECTION (Maybe remove all the partitions off the HDD before starting).

Note, other members on the board are experiencing issues with Magician running under Windows 10. Incompatible driver issues are causing problems.

You may find it quicker to reinstall Windows 10 and App environment to the HDD, then try to copy over your DATA separately. Though, keep trying with the clone. Just make sure the process is error free before calling it done.

 

[chubby]

to 'reintall win10 and the app environment' ; i boot off the recovery dvd disk, the use the USB recovery drive, not the windows created system image ?

i was planning on trying to use the windows created system image on the WD USB 1TB drive now to reinstall to the HDD after booting from the DVD "recovery disk" as my next step , but since it seems the SSD and HDD can't be plugged in to the SATA headers, and have the SSD drive maybe i'm stuck , guess I'll have to unplug the SSD one way or another

I start to forget the exact configurations that are causing various problems

 

Since you have a drive enclosure, I would suggest pulling the SSD and placing it in that, install the HHD in the PC, set the BIOS back to normal setting, then either boot the enclosure or another Live/PE environment and try cloning again -- just make sure you're cloning in the DESIRED DIRECTION (Maybe remove all the partitions off the HDD before starting).

Note, other members on the board are experiencing issues with Magician running under Windows 10. Incompatible driver issues are causing problems.

You may find it quicker to reinstall Windows 10 and App environment to the HDD, then try to copy over your DATA separately. Though, keep trying with the clone. Just make sure the process is error free before calling it done.

 

[chubby]

strangely, some time ago I believed i installed magician 4.6 , however I just looked at samsung.com and for my drive, they are NOT listing 4.6 , only 4.4 as available for my particular 840evo , hmm

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/MZ-7TE1T0BW

AND. though, magician says it is "up to date" , from "magician information"-&gt; "download s/w and manual" , I click and it takes me to a version 4.7 !

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html

maybe i'll go and install 4.7 though, i'm guessing it may have no impact , on my overall situation ; though while in AHCI, at one time I could see both HDs SSD and HDD in windoze10 at the beginning of all this ......

updated to 4.7 and in the magician my "SATA interface" says "unable to detect SATA interface details" , not sure if that is pertinent?

Edited October 9, 2015 by chubby

[chubby]

.....well i put the HDD in the enclosure, and was able to clone 2 of the 3 partition, just said "failed bad file descripter verifyfilesystem failed" which may not matter, as I don't know why the SSD has the partitions that it does, other than windows 10 wanted it the way it is or the SSD may use the 3rd for recovery partition only.

in disk management i see 4 partitions

352mb

837GB the boot partition

93GB over provisioning

450mb recovery partition

but in the magician i just see 3 partitions on the SSD

837

93

450

....guess i'll cross my fingers and swap back in the HDD and unplug the SSD and hope the HDD boots

[chubby]

i was able to boot from the/a DVD, the restore a image from the USB HD, to the HDD, however, strangely though i'm now on a HDD, when I go to properties to defragment, (as it is 10 minutes to reboot now), it is recognizing the HDD as a "solid state drive", I uninstalled magician

hopefully the system self corrects somewhere as a 10 minute boot is not going to be acceptable ...... any ideas?

the 1TB Macrium cloning wouldn't boot, so I did the above

Edited October 10, 2015 by chubby

[RichCor]

Doing a search through other Windows Forums, some users have stated that Windows 8/8.1 creates a reserved partition to hold winre.wim (a Recovery Environment / boot image), and that a Windows 10 upgrade preserves this partition and RE file for downgrading and creates a second reserved partition to hold a slightly larger winre.wim for Windows 10 recovery.

Did your SSD come with a SATA/USB connector? I would try using the BIOS boot options to boot USD (the SSD) and then CLONE from the SSD to the internal HHD. (preferable wipe all the partitions off the HHD so there won't be any confusing questions/choices during the clone process.

re:magician: If you do a search you'll find many ongoing issues with Windows 10 and Samsung's Magician. They put out then pulled 4.6

I believe PIB discusses the saga here in a Lenovo laptop thread that overall doesn't make for good reading (except for PIB's posts).

[Pib]

Yea, when I upgraded from Win 8.1 to Win 10 it created a third partition 462MB in size named recovery partition. Before that I just had the System Reserved partition 350MB in size and my C Drive partition (many GB) which I still have plus that third 462MB partition now.

Regarding the Samsung Magician utility, it's not needed at all to use a Samsung SSD...it just adds features like SMART, Rapid Mode, and various other features. And in the current version of Magician, which is 4.7 per the Samsung download website, Rapid Mode will not fully work under Win 10...no Rapid Mode...it only works for Win 7 and Win 8.X. I've been using Magician 4.7 under Win 10 with my 840EVO 500GB SSD since version 4.7 came out a month or two ago...no problems at all...it's just you can not activate Rapid Mode under Win 10.

And regarding Samsung Migration which is Samsung's utility to move your data from your old drive to the Samsung SSD drive via cloning, it's not blessed by Samsung to use with Win 10 not to imply it won't work. Samsung Migration didn't fully work for me when migrating from HDD to SSD under Win 8.1 a year or so ago as it didn't clone my System Reserve partition properly (it downsized it from 350MB to 100MB) which created a image backup problem when using the Windows built-in backup/imaging option. According to some googling at that time it was apparently happening to other folks also...but for most folks it worked properly and didn't downsize the System Reserved partition. I then used Macrium Reflect Free to do the clone and it worked perfectly...backup/imaging problem with Windows fixed. I've probably used Macrium Reflect Ver 5 and the current Ver 6 six to ten times cloning back and forth between HDD to SSD and SSD to HDD and HDD to HDD of various manufacturers (WD, Seagate, Samsung)--never a problem (knock on wood).

As of 8 Oct 15 (a few days ago), below is a cut and paste of a Samsung Customer Service email reply to a customer regarding the Samsung Magician and Migration utilities.

[chubby]

funny thing happened on the way to installing into a new build , the new system is using the leftover win10 system from the SSD and booting, I was planning on installing win8 pro for full disk encryption, which I guess is still my plan, i didn't think i could just put a SSD /HD into an new MB system and expect it to boot, though it has rebooted 3 times, for critical this or that, it seems to be adapting itself to the new hardware, fwiw

hopefully not doing any damage to the new hardware along the way

[chubby]

if and when i install win8.1 pro, i wonder how long it will be before i am offered win10 pro and/or during my win8.1 how i should do my partitions, possibly win8.1 will automagically create partitions of size and number similar to what win10 wants ?

[chubby]

i would typically think that I'm not allowed to install/run to two systems with the same license, and one or the other would be declared illegal, at some point, though, i used the win7 disk some time ago from my desktop to reinstall onto my laptop, as i had no other way to recover the laptop OS and it has complained of being an illegal copy, though i think i also called into M$ one time to get a code waiver , hmm

i think i'll still reinstall to win8.1 pro and suffer for a while ; i've never run win 8.x .......

[chubby]

just deleted all the partitions, not sure if win 8 is going to make > 1 partition, but it was getting confused with the old win 10, seems downgrading from a win 10 system taken from another system to win 8 pro and 'preserving ones files' must be a stretch to a glitch free life

prolly just as well, i'm not careful enough, installing widget software to do utility type stuff in the old computer . checking MD5 sums and such ; maybe i have some malware, that malwarebytes and norton don't find

anyone have any advice on how to 'harden' a new win8 system, other than what i can google, and won't cause me headaches, and massive time ; like a piece of software to change the settings, and shut down services that are not needed?