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‎10-30-2016 10:39 AM

HP Recommended

Unfortunatly I don't have relatives out there (otherwise I would have stayed there trust me !). So I'm going to continue my trial/error process through all the different version of windows 8.1.

 

If it's succesful and I'm still alive to report - I'll let you know !

 

Cheers

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‎10-30-2016 10:42 AM

HP Recommended

Good luck!

 

I would conjecture that the key in the BIOS of your PC is either W8.1 core, or W8.1 single language (English).

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‎10-30-2016 11:47 AM - edited ‎10-30-2016 11:49 AM

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I asked Microsoft again - in fact I wanted them to give me another key - but finally they told me it's a "Windows 8.1 Bing" Product Key. Surprise :  It's apparently the only version of W8.1 which isn't available for download on a legal way ! So now I'm downloading it from another source. Hard to tell if it's genuine but it's worth trying. Step by step. 

 

Cheers !

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‎10-30-2016 11:49 AM

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It figures!

 

If you didn't have bad luck, you'd have no luck at all.

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‎10-31-2016 06:10 AM - edited ‎10-31-2016 06:31 AM

HP Recommended

Finally ! Big Success !

 

So it was definitely Windows 8.1 Bing Edition pre-installed on my laptop HP 14-r064TU.

It's not a public edition of windows so I couldn't get it legally.

 

For the little story, Microsoft gave this version for free (or really cheap) to the manufacturers (HP&Co) so they would make cheap laptops and tablets (because they could cut the windows license to the price) and thus sell lots of them. Microsoft objective was to popularise Bing quickly and concurrence direclty google. So nobody has this version apart from a few compagnies, even repair stores apparently struggle to find proper copies of it.

 

So usually very cheap (~300 USD) windows 8.1 laptop are under a Bing license.

 

Anyway, I downloaded it through torrent and managed to make a UEFI bootable USB stick with the '.img' file. During the installation the BIOS embedded Product Key's been read - didn't have to write it down- and Windows's been registered automatically in the process. Marvellous.

 

You may understand that I can't put the link to the torrent file in here. The source would be put down quickly.

 

Took me time but it finally paid off !

 

Thank you !

 

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‎10-31-2016 06:34 AM

HP Recommended

That is great news!

 

Glad you got it to work and I completely understand that you cannot post links to spurious websites.

 

Glad to have been of assistance, where I could.

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