[Cykeman]

I bought a laptop 2 days ago with windows 8 already installed. I wanted to upgrade to windows 8 pro so I tried the microsoft offer of 39.95 - because I was not going from win 7 I missed out on the 14.95 deal.
Anyway, I could not get the download assistant to work as it kept telling me no pro upgrade available in my region(????)
Well I called microsoft support and with remote access the download assistant worked (I later found the fix for that) but the support person AT MICROSOFT said my hard drive would be formatted to upgrade to win 8 pro!!!
Is that true? I got some software from HP on laptop and of course no cds and I don't want to lose them.
I did win7 home to win7 pro and there was no formatting.
PLEASE let me know if the hard drive gets reformatted or not going from a win 8 to a win 8 pro.
thanks

[LiveBrianD]

You should be able to use Windows Anytime Upgrade (search it from the homescreen) with the Pro key.

[Cykeman]

LiveBrianD, on 12 December 2012 - 04:11 PM, said:

You should be able to use Windows Anytime Upgrade (search it from the homescreen) with the Pro key.

uh, not the question I need answered.

[LiveBrianD]

The hard drive won't get formatted doing that. I don't know why you would want to do this any other way. Basically, this just unlocks the pro features (that were previously disabled), and thus leaves everything in place and only takes 10 minutes or so.

[waldojim]

Cykeman, on 12 December 2012 - 01:06 PM, said:

I bought a laptop 2 days ago with windows 8 already installed. I wanted to upgrade to windows 8 pro so I tried the microsoft offer of 39.95 - because I was not going from win 7 I missed out on the 14.95 deal.
Anyway, I could not get the download assistant to work as it kept telling me no pro upgrade available in my region(????)
Well I called microsoft support and with remote access the download assistant worked (I later found the fix for that) but the support person AT MICROSOFT said my hard drive would be formatted to upgrade to win 8 pro!!!
Is that true? I got some software from HP on laptop and of course no cds and I don't want to lose them.
I did win7 home to win7 pro and there was no formatting.
PLEASE let me know if the hard drive gets reformatted or not going from a win 8 to a win 8 pro.
thanks

Go at this from the way Windows Vista, 7, and 8 were supposed to be designed, the Windows Anytime Upgrade that Brian mentioned should allow you to change over to Windows 8 Pro without reinstalling anything.

Now, from what I understand, some features are limited to 64bit Windows 8, and that may be the source of the problem. If the machine was shipped with Windows 8 32bit, then yes moving to Windows 8 Pro X64 will require a fresh install.

[LiveBrianD]

What features were you thinking of in particular? I hadn't heard of any.

That said, it's pretty much impossible to buy a new laptop with 32-bit Windows already on it nowadays...

[orlbuckeye]

It's a little bit different from Windows 7. What you have to do is go to Control Panel and select add new features. Then you will get the prompt I want to buy a new key online or if you already have a product key (which is the key for Windows Pro) just enter the key. Either option it will then upgrade you to Windows 8 Pro. I did this and then I had to go into setting and enable Hyper-V.


Or do this

http://windows.micro...8/feature-packs

This post has been edited by orlbuckeye: 16 December 2012 - 11:49 AM

[Cykeman]

LiveBrianD, on 12 December 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

What features were you thinking of in particular? I hadn't heard of any.

That said, it's pretty much impossible to buy a new laptop with 32-bit Windows already on it nowadays...

The laptop had Win 8 64 installed. I wanted more network control, as the "users and groups" function is not there for groups unless you get Win 8 Pro, and I have always had the "pro" version anyway.
The deal did not seem too bad at $40, but first the upgrade checker from Microsoft would tell me "no upgrade for your system is available for your region", and that got me to call Microsoft support, where "the expert" took over my laptop, ran into the same message I did, put me on hold for almost 5 minutes, then came back to say that if I did the upgrade to pro, my hard drive would be re-formatted.
I just don't believe this, AND my home network does show up and is accessible from the laptop (all XP machines), even without the "group" maint. What I do not know yet is if the proper XP machines can access the laptop.

[LiveBrianD]

No, you definitely don't need to reformat the hard drive to install 8. As I was saying, just use the Anytime Upgrade wizard.