Bought new Win8 Laptop, want to upgrade HDD. How do I get windows on blank

[Xystence]

I recently purchased a new Asus laptop, and the hard drive on it is very slow and I am wanting to move into an SSD. I am having trouble finding a solutions on how to get Windows 8 clean installed on the new drive since I do not have any media for my computer as its all on recovery partitons. I do not have a product key either since its hard coded to the bios. I was able to pull a key but the MS site to download the W8 ISO states that my key is not a retail key and therefor cannot download the ISO.

Does anyone have any advice on how I accomplish this task? I would prefer to be able to clean install without all of Asus's stuff on it, but im not certain how.

Thank you in advance!

[JaredFrost]

Not sure about the forum rules on this, but it seems legit enough to me.....I guess I'll find out, I am in the process of doing the same thing myself

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/11/10/how-to-re-download-the-windows-8-iso/

[xendrome]

I recently purchased a new Asus laptop, and the hard drive on it is very slow and I am wanting to move into an SSD. I am having trouble finding a solutions on how to get Windows 8 clean installed on the new drive since I do not have any media for my computer as its all on recovery partitons. I do not have a product key either since its hard coded to the bios. I was able to pull a key but the MS site to download the W8 ISO states that my key is not a retail key and therefor cannot download the ISO.

Does anyone have any advice on how I accomplish this task? I would prefer to be able to clean install without all of Asus's stuff on it, but im not certain how.

Thank you in advance!

Well if you get something like the Corsair M4 with the transfer kit, it has software that will clone your current install onto the new drive, then you can boot up with the new drive and do a complete PC refresh in Windows 8...

[Guest pgxl]

What you can do is get an external enclosure for the SSD and plug it in via usb to the laptop. Now download some harddrive cloning software and clone a copy of your current drive to your SSD.

While that is not the best solution at least it gets the recovery partition and windows on the new drive. You should now be able to recover Windows on the new drive; I would not try to use the pre-exisiting windows installation that was also cloned over.

Acronis trueimage is a nice piece of software to clone drives: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=acronis%2B%2Btrue%2Bimage%2Bnot%2Bbranded&utm_campaign=us_bing?source=us_msn&ad=ati&promo=us_msn#overview

If you bought an intel ssd you can download a free lite version of acronis from intel's site to do the cloning.

[Xystence]

Interesting that they have made it this much of a hassle to clean install windows on a new machine lol

Not sure about the forum rules on this, but it seems legit enough to me.....I guess I'll find out, I am in the process of doing the same thing myself

http://www.ghacks.ne...-windows-8-iso/

I would very much like to know if this worked out! I really want to clean install without all of Asus's stuff on it

[JaredFrost]

Interesting that they have made it this much of a hassle to clean install windows on a new machine lol

I would very much like to know if this worked out! I really want to clean install without all of Asus's stuff on it

I couldn't get the assistant to connect to the internet to test that part, and since I already had a retail disc image so I didn't bother to troubleshoot it

so I cannot help with the getting the disc image, but it installed without issue, didn't even ask for the OEM key, it was all auto populated and activated without issue.

So as long as you can get a copy of the Windows 8 disc you can install your OEM license.

[hackdoom]

I am doing a clean install at the moment, and used the following links for instruction...

http://pcsupport.abo...s-8-upgrade.htm

http://pcsupport.abo...tall-part-1.htm

http://www.ghacks.ne...-windows-8-iso/

Make sure to read the comments in the last link... Perhaps, they have some information on getting the ISO without a Retail key?

Hope I have been of some help.

[Xystence]

I am doing a clean install at the moment, and used the following links for instruction...

http://pcsupport.abo...s-8-upgrade.htm

http://pcsupport.abo...tall-part-1.htm

http://www.ghacks.ne...-windows-8-iso/

Make sure to read the comments in the last link... Perhaps, they have some information on getting the ISO without a Retail key?

Hope I have been of some help.

I am reading and understanding :)