Windows 8 (.1) Recovery

Lenovo desktop shipped with 8.0 installed.

I think the HD crashed. I hear those ugly clicks from under the hood.

Error message suggests recovery. No I did not make a USB from this machine. I have others Identical to it but I am getting lost in the process.
I made what I thought was a USB recovery thumb drive. The computer boots and offers some tools. Not anything I am used to, a bit too automated. The diagnostic said it could not diagnose. I did not have any significant data so I thought I would attempt to use the image and start over. Seems to be working but then asks for location of image. I guess not on the USB drive? I have machines that are 8.0, 8.1. same make and model. Is there something I can do? If its hard drive and I replace it I will need the procedure to get a system on the computer.

Thank you in advance for the help.
DC

 

I haven't used the built in recovery procedure myself as I use third party software to image my systems, but I think the procedure is looking for either the built-in recovery partition in OEM systems or failing that, a Windows installation disk. So on your Lenovo it ought to find the recovery partition. If the machine is still working I recommend you grab an image asap. You could use Aomei Backupper for this and would need an external drive to store the image, or a few DVDs.

 

Thank you. I will try. but not accessing at this point. I can get image from another machine.

sorry I could not find this original post and re sent this am. the other should be ignored or deleted.

dc

 

If you have another identical Lenovo configured identically, you could attach the new hard drive to it externally and use MiniTool Partition Wizard's copy partition feature. Do this from the bootable MiniTool CD. The disk would boot once installed in the problem pc. You would then need to change the Product Key to that of the problem pc because the Keys are tied to one machine.

I tried using AOMEI Backupper's cloning feature to clone two System drives on to one larger hard drive and noticed that Backupper was re-assigning the boot LBA for Win 8.1 Pro to a new location (it should be at LBA 63). MiniTool correctly copied all of the sectors and I've got Win 8.1 Pro on one partition and Vista Ultimate on the other and I dual-boot the machine.

 

I am logged in on the restored machine.
I used AOMEI and the drive did not boot. I used the MiniTool to retry.
in fairness it did not boot either. a "1962" no os error just like AOMEI.
This bios does not have much in the way of changeable settings so I entered the setup defaults and then the disk booted. Seems to be working fine. AOMEI may have worked if I had performed the BIOS to setup defaults for it as well.
I am waiting for the other shoe to drop as this machine does not have any sticker, nor did any come with the documentation from LENOVO. there is a Win8 license comment in the BIOS. I am hoping that is all that is needed. We shall see.
Thanks again to all of you.
if anything changes I will update.
DC

 

If the machine came with Win 8.1 as an OEM install, there are ways to extract the Product Key from the UEFI (BIOS).

Have a look here.