Recovery from Win 10 got PC back to Win 8.1. Want to go back to Win 10

[N5MT]

A Win 10 system was corrupted by a virus, Repair would not fix and Sys Reset would not work.

A Win 10 on a ISO flash drive would not restore saying boot corrupted.

Finally got the HP Recovery partition to reload and format the HD but system was originally Win 8 so I am back a release.

Win 8.1 boots ok and desktop comes up fine and has internet access etc.

With the imbeded MS Prod Key in the BIOS, will the Win 10 ISO allow me to upgrade the PC to Win 10 again?

The PC is out of HP warrenty by 4 months, Aug 2016.

Thanks.  Mike  N5MT  

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

If your PC was previously upgraded to W10 and successfully activated, yes you can upgrade back to W10 by either going from W8.1 to W10, or clean installing W10 by using the Media Creation Tool.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

If you clean install, select the 'I don't have a product key' option at the point where you are asked to enter the product key.

[N5MT]

Thanks Paul,

I  used your method to download Win 10 which only took 8 min.  The script then tried to download Updates which went on for hours.  I did a google search and found that my pagefile might be too small and it was for the Win 8.1 that I had just restored.  I increased pagefile to 4 Gig and rebooted Win 8 and then redownloaded Win 10.  The update ran correctly and I was on my way to a rebuild of Win 10.   Even though I had 12 Gig of real memory something happened that kept the update from finishing, as I let it run over night without finishing the two times.  

The activation of Win 10 was automatic so the rebuild picked up the hidden key without a problem.  

Thanks again.   Happy New Year.    N5MT Mike

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome, N5MT Mike.

Happy New Year to you too!

Paul