Does anyone can confirm if a Sony Vaio laptop with Windows 8.1 can be upgraded to Windows 10 using the Product Key in the System info?
Don't know the Windows 8.1 license key only the Product key!
You dont need to worry about the key goto Download Windows 10 hit upgrade and it will take care of everything
It should work yes, but make a backup copy first as suggested.
Yes, you can still upgrade from W7/8/8.1 to W10 and it will activate.
As samuria said...
Alternatives which will also work are......goto Download Windows 10 hit upgrade and it will take care of everything
go to that page and download the Media Creation Tool, run it and use its 'upgrade this PC now' option.
Use the MCT to make the ISO and use that to upgrade the existing Win 8.1 system.
For a clean install, use the MCT to make the bootable USB. Boot from it and it will detect the Windows 8.1 key that is embedded in the PC's bios. It will use this to choose the appropriate version (Home or Pro) and activate the system.
More details in these tutorials.
Upgrade to Windows 10 | Tutorials
Clean Install Windows 10 | TutorialsIf this is an OEM PC that has a valid product key embedded in its UEFI firmware chip, then you will not be prompted to enter a product key.
Thanks all for your input.
Just to update how the issue started here is a bit of history and perhaps you can answer my questions below.
Issues with the VAIO laptop SVF/1521C2EW running Windows 8.1
Apologies for such a long-winded post.
The issue started with a 3 months old Epson ET-2600 printer suddenly printing a load of nonsense instead of the document that it was supposed to print.
It would print a never-ending number of pages, the more I put in the tray themore it would print, even though print the queue was empty. I tried to scan a document it displayed a message to wait till the scanner had finished although
there were no scans in progress!
I uninstalled the printer driver and all the software that comes on the installation disk and reinstalled the printer and software with a USB cable again, but it did not solve the issues.
To cut a long story short I went through 3 weeks of performing instructions that Epson Support asked me to carry out including using different USB cables, to fully uninstall the printer, deleting Temp files, Epson 'oem' files in the Windows inf folder, stop the Print Spooler service in Local Services, remove the Epson files from the w32x86 folder and the x64 folder Windows 32 and restarting the computer. This should also restart the Print Spooler. Once restarted, check that the Print Spooler service is running. After which the Epson printer driver is now completely uninstalled.
I reinstalled the printer, but the issue remained. I then tried another Epson SX312 printer which worked fine. The next step was to try the ET-2600 printer in another computer, and to my surprise the ET-2600 printer worked as it should. It printed, scanned and photocopied without a hitch confirming that the issue laid with the Sony Vaio laptop!
This brings me to the present issue. I tried to create an image of the Vaio HDD with Macrium Free, but in the first attempt it reported Error 23 which indicates bad sectors. I run chkdsk /r and tried to create an image for the second time, and it did create an image without any errors.
It was time to try to install the ET-2600 printer again. I went ahead and installed the ET-2600 printer on the Vaio again and lord and behold the printer worked as it should! So, the issue was with the HDD and not the printer all the time!
Now is the question of what to do with the HDD with bad clusters;
Since the HDD has bad sectors what would be the best action to take bearing in mind that I would like to upgrade to Windows 10 for free if that is still possible?
- Would cloning the damaged HDD to a new HDD, keeping Windows 8.1 and the Sony Vaio software and then upgrade to Windows 10 for free on the new cloned HDD if that is still possible hence keeping all my data and programs?
- Get rid of the damaged HDD all together and clean install Windows 10 for free if that is still possible?
Any help would be most appreciated!
That would work. As explained, the windows 8.1 key for this PC is embedded in its firmware. A clean install on a replacement drive would pick up on this key and use it to install and activate the edition of Windows 10 that the key is entitled to use, Home or Pro depending on what edition of W8.1 your PC came with.
There is a risk that some of the image may contain corrupt data after the repairs on the original drive. If you can restore the image to a replacement drive and it boots to Windows, the it should be possible to upgrade it to Windows 10. If it doesn't boot at first, the Macrium repair media has a 'fix windows boot problems' tool that may help.Would cloning the damaged HDD to a new HDD, keeping Windows 8.1 and the Sony Vaio software and then upgrade to Windows 10 for free on the new cloned HDD if that is still possible hence keeping all my data and programs?
Damaged Windows system files should be no problem as they would be replaced by the upgrade, the risk is more to the other software and your user files.
From your chkdsk log it looks like only one file was damaged, a windows system file. You may be in luck....
Windows replaced bad clusters in file 37755 of name \Windows\WinSxS\AMCE9B~1.170\mispace.dll.
Thanks for the suggestions. I will take your advice and replace the HDD possibly with an SSD and then clean install Windows 10.
Thank you all for your help.
Keep the Macrium image handy. Once you have installed Macrium on the new system you can double-click on the image file to mount it as a virtual drive. Then you can copy all your user files from it. Make sure you tick the box to enable access to restricted folders.
If you want any of the Sony VAIO utilities, you should be able to download them from the Sony support site. The Win8 versions should work if there are no Win10 downloads for your PC.
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