Non legitimate 7 Ultimate, best option to revert to home.

lb32435 · 13 Oct 2012

Hi,

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro C855-10Z and after having a memory error on my HDD was sent a emplacement, at this point I installed what was meant to be a legitimate copy of Ultimate Edition. Now I know this isn't the case.

What is the best option for reverting to Home Premium 64 for which I have a legal CD key. When I replaced my HDD I created the Toshiba Recovery disks, I assume these restore me to factory setting including the original installation of windows? Should I put any important files on USB and then run these, just I've heard they don't always work as well as they should.

Or are there better options available?

Thanks in advance,
Lee

ignatzatsonic · 13 Oct 2012

If your Toshiba Recovery disks work as advertised, you can revert to Home Premium with them. You shouldn't need your Product Key. Sometimes those disks don't work as advertised.

Or you can download a legit Home Premium ISO from mydigitallife.info, burn it to a disc, clean install with the disc, and activate with the CD key on the sticker on your Toshiba.

The former will leave you with all the extra stuff Toshiba included from the factory. The latter will not. You might prefer not to have that extra stuff.

I'm assuming this key you refer to is taken from a "COA" sticker on the laptop. On the other hand, if you have a Home Premium disk that you bought after you bought the laptop, the key from it should work as well.

lb32435 · 13 Oct 2012

Yeah it's a key from the bottom of the laptop. Thanks I'll try the latter. Will I lose my files etc. I know you can repair or reinstall windows without doing so but what about since I'm changing the operating system?

Thanks,
Lee

BarnabasSackett · 16 Oct 2012

lb32435 said:

Yeah it's a key from the bottom of the laptop. Thanks I'll try the latter. Will I lose my files etc. I know you can repair or reinstall windows without doing so but what about since I'm changing the operating system?

In my experience, unless you tell the system to reformat your harddrive, you won't lose your data files although you might have to move them to your new user directory after you create your new identity.

IMHO, it is best to partition your hard drive into one relatively small system drive for Windows and applications, mine is about 60GB, and one or more larger drives for data. I have three partitions: system, data, and cd-rom copies. The CD-ROM copy drive is for copies of disks that insist on being in the drive when the program is being run. So far the only program that hasn't worked this way is one of the newer versions of SIMS.

Recently, my ex's computer crashed. I live nowhere near her so I recommended that she take the hard drive to a local tech weenie for help. He managed to retrieve her data easily because it was on a separate partition. Fortunately, he is the husband of a friend so there was no fee.

One thing that I wish that MS would have Windows do right at Setup is ask you for the location of your user data. In today's world we might be using an SSD for a system drive and a spinning platter for data. We might have two regular drives. We might have separate partitions.

Yeah, I know that we can set that up ourselves and then feel macho about doing it but I could do without the shenanigans required to get it working.