Is This MS Operation Normal? Termination of Validity - $200 One Year?

As already advised, you should do a Clean install as they may have installed some malicious software on your computer.
- Backup your data (only data) to a external disk.
- Download a Win 10 32Bits (not 64 as you have only 2G of memory). Use create installation media
- Boot the win 10 32bits installation disk, go to advanced and delete ALL partitions till you have one and only one unallocated space then proceed. The wizard will create the necessary partitions and install Win 10. You don't need to insert a key (skip) as your laptop was once activated and M$ has your laptop ID on their servers.
- Restore your data from the external disk.
- Download the programs you had and install them. Don't use any software that was previous saved on your laptop as they may be infected.

Clean Install Windows 10

Well I pulled the plug on the internet immediately. Reported the scam to MS. Tried to report to Aus. authorities but got led up blind alleys and circles so gave that up.

And this morn set off to reinstall Windows.

Got a message 'Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI system Windows can only be installed to GPT disks'.

And it is talking about the disk the current Windows installation is on.

And has been since the last time I had to do a clean install on this troublesome machine.

And yes, the Win10 was activated, everything was fine, best of my knowledge. I've done two or three clean installs over the last year or more and all on top of a win10 install that I got from a Win7 upgrade and which was all kosher and activated etc...

I believe that the saying to activate message was the start of the scam.

That'd be right, I think. How/when they got in to set that up past my Avast and MS security and whatnot I don't know.

I'm going downtown now to get another hard drive to do a clean install on.

Thanks for the help.

:)

I just discovered there's no SATA hard drives available around here. The chain stores sell only USB external drives.

My thinking has been that I need SATA because of speed.

But googling around a bit in the last few minutes seems to have revealed that real speeds between computer and hard drive are limited to about 100MB/s and USB2 delivers 60MB/s.

I know that's a lot of difference between 100 and 60 but for the short period of time one is accessing the disk, usually, it's not going to be discernable really, is it?

Whereas I was thinking there's a world of difference - a difference between 60MB/s for USB and say 300MB/s for SATAII.

Seems I was wrong.

I might as well get a USB drive and put the new win10 on it.

What would you say?

Yes, I've got SATA drives alright. And USB drives. No IDE. My motherboard has no IDE connector, not that I'd want one.

Decided I wanted to have SATA rather than a chain store external USB so I just got a Western Digital 2T.

Now to put a new win10 on it. I need to follow those tenforum directions and create an install media, a bootable usb, or I can do an online install if I boot off Kyhi for instance?

And I already have a couple of bootable USB win10 install sticks I've made previously. Might as well use one of them if I can't do an online install or I should create another one for the sake of getting the latest version of Win10?

abrogard said:

And I already have a couple of bootable USB win10 install sticks I've made previously. Might as well use one of them if I can't do an online install or I should create another one for the sake of getting the latest version of Win10?

You can do either, really. When you boot the computer from the USB Windows 10 install flash drive, at the first screen you will want to press Shift + F10 keys. This will open a command prompt. Then you will enter the following commands to completely erase the internal drive of your computer. Note you will lose all data on the internal drive!

diskpart
select disk 0
clean
convert mbr
exit
exit

Then proceed with the custom install option. When you get to the screen that lists drives and partitions, select the unallocated space and click next.

Yes, I know I added the convert mbr command. Yes, I know that a UEFI install by Microsoft requires a GPT drive. Yes, I know that setup does not care about the current drive being MBR so long as there are no partitions on it, it will simply convert the drive to GPT. Trust me.

This is a new blank disk bought just for the purpose.

I still need any/all of those commands?

abrogard said:

This is a new blank disk bought just for the purpose.

I still need any/all of those commands?

You should not have too so long as the screen after selecting the Custom Install option shows the drive as unallocated space.