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Question

W8 laptop nightmare

Jun 1, 2015 11:37AM PDT

Purchased a laptop on Ebay...just to use on a trip soon to show pics and dvd's to family so I didn't want to spend much.

Got the laptop, everything works fine....had W8 installed already, thought I received no disk and would create one from a partition (no such luck) but found the disk a few days later inside the drive itself. Did not receive the Product Key with it.

When I booted it up, another user was already there...no problem....I created my own. Then Windows did its thing and immediately began downloading and installing updates.

One of those updates was 8.1......Although the laptop was already activated with W8, it now wanted to activate 8.1 and asked for the Key for 8, which I didn't have. I wrote to the seller to get it, and was sent to an online website. Immediately saw that it was going to be problems.....pirated and hacked W8.

Since I can't activate the legit 8.1 without purchasing it, I'm sending the laptop back; however, when I logged in as Admin to uninstall 8.1 and my user account, Windows attempted on its own to activate, and locked me completely out of the laptop immediately after the login screen disappeared.

I changed the BIOS to boot the the cd, thinking I could just format the drive and erase everything, even if I didn't install W8 again, but the disk isn't bootable evidently because it bypasses it after a minute or so, goes to the Admin login screen and turns black with the lockdown again.

Is there any way to format the drive from the BIOS or by using a bootable W98/XP cd that I still have here and leave it blank before sending it back to the seller for her to deal with the problem at her end later? I DO have an external adapter that can hook the laptop harddrive to my other computer so I might be able to format the drive that way....I would just have to remove the laptop HDD temporarily.

Options? I'm already PO'd, so please don't make this worse. lol

New laptop already purchased and being shipped.....

Discussion is locked

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Answer
UEFI and GPT
Jun 1, 2015 12:17PM PDT

You can read up on those at wikis.

You may be locked in a hiberfile loop. W8 by default, just so it can boot a bit faster, goes to a hibernation file, so sometimes things don't get saved and sometimes things get caught in a loop. everyone was screaming about such problems when it came out and still do actually.

When you do a shutdown it goes back to hiberfile. You have to do a Reset now to get to a cold boot.

Making things worse is every motherboard manufacturer now has it's own new graphical UEFI BIOS and they differ therefore from one manufacturer to another, unlike the old AMI and Phoenix BIOS chips.

UEFI is really like two different BIOS combined. One is the UEFI and the other is a Legacy mode, which returns to something resembling the older style BIOS. Windows also has a registered Secure Boot System which runs direct from the BIOS. If you want to access the BIOS settings more, you need to turn that off.

My advice is this, since it's probably crapped up anyway, but may help recover it. Download a Linux Mint 17 MATE version which is 64 bit and do a side by side install. If the windows can't be recovered, at least you'll have the Linux Mint MATE to use. It's what I use and love it, more like XP than windows 8. An added advantage is you can use it without even installing it, but if that's done you need to save any files to the hard drive instead, because when used as a LIVE DVD booted system, it's "read only", so no saves allowed except to USB flashdrive or a hard drive.

If you install it, can read all partitions on the drive including the windows partitions, and allow access to them also.

http://www.linuxmint.com/
http://www.distrowatch.com shows popularity of it on right side column.
http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=174 this is the version you want

or can order for $6 plus postage from here.
https://www.osdisc.com/products/linux/linuxmint/linux-mint-171-mate-install-live-dvd-64bit.html

on their front page due to being so popular.
http://www.osdisc.com

If you want something faster than DVD LIVE run system, I can show you how to setup a LIVE USB that greatly increase speed.

I talk about it some in these posts, same thread if you want to read the other comments in it.
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-6617_102-5677848.html
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-6617_102-5677860.html

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Answer
Oh, if you just want to wipe it clean
Jun 1, 2015 12:26PM PDT

If you can figure how to boot to a CD or DVD, then you can boot to the disc I mentioned and access GParted program on it which allows deletion of all partitions. You can also run a program "dd" that overwrites the entire drive with either zeroes, or random characters, your choice. The latter takes a bit of time, so unless you have personal data on it, I'd just wipe the partitions off the disk. There's also an easy way to use the "dd" command to do that if you can boot the Linux disc.

you open terminal program, looks like DOS screen. You enter the following.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=2M count=2

That wipes out the very first 4 megs of data which kills both the MBR and the GPT above it. It doesn' t however kill the backup GPT at the end of the drive, so GParted and removing the partitions, then reformatting is probably the easiest and quickest for you.

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Answer
This might sound dumb
Jun 2, 2015 1:36AM PDT

but laptops I've seen have a sticker on the bottom with the code. Sometimes they are very small and could be beat enough as to be unreadable. The seller should be aware of such a defect. I don't know if "magic jellybean keyfinder" works with Win 8 but it does work with Win 7. It's a free utility that pulls up code for MS products including Office. I've used it a lot in situations like yours.

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No such luck
Jun 2, 2015 3:25AM PDT

The seller is accepting the return and will refund.

I tried using my little transfer device mentioned in order to wipe the drive clean first, but after pulling the hard drive it turns out to be an older type (not SATA) and my device doesn't have the pinhole section for that type of laptop HDD....I can do it for SATA, IDE, and USB drives easy-peasy....figures the laptop would be a thorn.

I tried changing the bios a number of times on this pos to boot to the DVD/CD drive and it says it is saving the change as I exit, but it doesn't hold long enough to actually boot. Discovered that when it wouldn't boot to a W98 or XP cd either. It's an older Phoenix BIOS so I thought I could format the drive that way, but no happiness there either.

I only had the laptop for three days and locked out of it completely the last day anyhow so other than checking my mail online I don't have of my favorites or Outlook mail, etc. entered into it.....never got that far before Windows locked it down for an invalid Product Key, so evidently whatever was used was recognized by Windows as not legit and didn't wait the 30 days to shut it down.

If I had a USB cord that had the right connectors at both ends, I might be able to hook it up to my desktop PC that way and format it, but after looking all day yesterday for one here, I have every kind of connector available BUT that one. LOL

I quit......boxing it up and sending it back today.

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I always
Jun 2, 2015 8:39PM PDT

cover product keys with clear packing tape so they won't wear off the numbers. I do that on the signature on back of my credit cards too.