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I have bought a new Dell Inspiron 15. It came with Windows 8.1 installed. But I want to replace it with Ubuntu (formatting OS partition & install Ubuntu), but afraid of loosing the original copy of Windows. Is it possible to recover windows later in future from recovery partition or recovery disks.

Kamil Maciorowski
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Raghav Mittal
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4 Answers4

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For your Windows key, if the laptop came with Windows 8 and there is a windows logo sticker on the bottom then the windows key is stored on the motherboard. This can be retrieved with some tools.

For Windows itself, you can simply put an .iso on an usb stick and reinstall Windows from that.

So you can safely wipe the whole disk. But only if you are 100% certain that the key is baked onto the motherboard. Use this tool to retrieve the key from your Windows installation.

Eejin
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  • yes there is a silver sticker with a black coloured win8 logo on bottom – Raghav Mittal Jul 03 '14 at 13:40
  • can I use this key later to activate windows 8... I have a windows 8 volume license iso file. – Raghav Mittal Jul 03 '14 at 13:43
  • I don't know about the volume license. Go to Computer->Right click-> properties. Then next to the windows logo does it say 8.1 Core? If so then I would recommend a Windows 8.1 Core .iso. Download from here and then select the install from media option. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/upgrade-product-key-only You select the media device to put the .iso on and then you can boot from that to install Windows. – Eejin Jul 03 '14 at 13:59
  • Windows 8 OEM keys store the key inside the UEFI and no longer on a sticker. – magicandre1981 Jul 03 '14 at 18:23
  • @magicandre1981 Windows 8 Pro licenses aren't baked into the motherboard when they are activated by a upgrade key. As a matter of fact, I already mentioned this in my answer. – Eejin Jul 03 '14 at 18:33
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Yes. Just make a recovery Disk of you windows drive and after replace Windows with Ubuntu!

FYI to make a back up disk:

Control pannel > System and security > Back up your computer

TheGoodUser
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If you keep your recovery partition and create any appropriate recovery discs, then you will always be able to restore your machine to its delivered state. This will lose anything else on the hard disc.

If it were me, I would shrink the W8 partition to ~50GB and give the rest of the disc over to Ubuntu to give a dual-boot system. That way I can always adjust the partition sizes if I want to start using W8 again, without losing the Ubuntu partition.

AFH
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Dell devices come with a software called Dell Backup and Recovery. Run the tool, create a full backup of the HDD, store the image on a second PC and also create a recovery media to be able to restore he image later.

When you want Windows 8 back, just restore the Image.

magicandre1981
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