Re-install Windows 8.0 or 8.1 on HP Pavilion 17-e028ca ???

[southsloper]

I have read a great post/thread asking about upgrading a Pavilion 17-e028ca from Win 8.1 to 10 and this is kind of related.

Almost 10-years ago, we'd bought 2 of the notebooks, 1 was a gift for a family member, and 1 for ourselves (wife).  Independently, both notebooks were upgraded to 10 in the past (i.e. free upgrade).

Last year, my wife's 17-e028ca's 1-GB HDD malfunctioned and wouldn't boot, but the HDD was readable so I backed up (again) important data files (photos, outlook PST files, etc).  I installed a 500-GB Samsung SSD and installed Windows 10 (from Microsoft download) which fired up but not Activated.  She used the notebook for a while, and recently given her another Windows 10 desktop with sufficient storage to hold date/files I'd backed up before.

So it seems that the newly installed Windows 10 wasn't able to use the original product code/activation key in the BIOS.  And of course, there is no COA label on the notebook, just a Windows 8 label on the bottom case.

Can I re-install Windows 8.0/8.1 and upgrade to 10 again?  As HP never provided a System Install CD, how can I accomplish this?  Is it still possible?  Or do I need to buy a Windows 10/11 license again?

Yes, I should've created a Recovery disk/cd <sigh>

[Paul_Tikkanen]

If the notebooks had been previously upgraded to W10 during the free upgrade period, Microsoft has a record of that.

When you clean install W10, and the notebook came with an older operating system that was eligible for the upgrade, it is important to make sure that you answer these questions correctly.

First you will be asked what version of W10 you want to install, and you select the version you had previously upgraded to (Home or Pro).

Then you will be asked to enter a product key.

You have to select the 'I don't have a product key' option and not use the Windows key in the BIOS, and W10 should install and automatically activate after you are connected to the internet.

If you did that, unfortunately, I don't know why Windows did not activate.

Reinstalling W8 or W8.1 will and upgrading back to W10 won't work to activate the installation and neither operating system is available for download anymore.

So, you would need to have W8 or W8.1 installation media available.

This vendor has a W8 recovery kit for your notebook if worse comes to worse.

https://www.computersurgeons.com/p-24114-windows-8-64-bit-dual-language-recovery-kit-731571-db3-for-...