Thinkpads Forum

My T420 took an hour to boot today and finally when it was all over I could not login and after a forced restart it won't boot anymore. Ran hardware tests and the drive is toast. I lost very little of my data due to having it backed up and the same data replicated on my MacBook Pro I'm typing this on. I have a spare 500GB HD lying around but I still haven't figured out how to get my Windows 10 Pro back. Can you guys tell me how to restore her and get my OS back? I'm tempted to just use my last Windows 7 Pro key I have left and be rid of Ten. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

It's mentioned that if the change to W10 was done through the "Digital Entitlement" that M$ will allow the install of W10 with no issues and with no requirement of a COA. Since you've good reason to "attempt" - it might be a very good reason to do the test of the M$ DE. Which VERSION of W110? 1607 or earlier?

I'd maybe hang on to the W7 PRO key and do the test.

What COA was included with the machine when delivered from Lenovo?

Post back if you do the "test" - it's of interest to me also with an older machine that was done through DE.

You've nothing to loose - absolutely nothing!

We for one would be very interested how your Win10 Digital Entitlement (DE) installation turns out--and good luck!

We have T410 with Win7, upgraded to Win10, then did Product Recovery to use Win7 again for our daily use.
We also wonder exactly what happens when we upgrade back to Win10, or as in your case HDD/SSD replacement would we get back our Win10 via DE?

Thank you in advance

I'll let you guys know. I'm creating the bootable Windows 10 drive right now on a backup Thinkpad. Hopefully it all goes well.

WVZR1 wrote:It's mentioned that if the change to W10 was done through the "Digital Entitlement" that M$ will allow the install of W10 with no issues and with no requirement of a COA. Since you've good reason to "attempt" - it might be a very good reason to do the test of the M$ DE. Which VERSION of W110? 1607 or earlier?

I'd maybe hang on to the W7 PRO key and do the test.

What COA was included with the machine when delivered from Lenovo?

Post back if you do the "test" - it's of interest to me also with an older machine that was done through DE.

You've nothing to loose - absolutely nothing!

My Thinkpad came with Windows 7 and I foolishly "upgraded" to ten. I still have that key I just realized. Not sure what version of Ten I had.

My Thinkpad came with Windows 7 and I foolishly "upgraded" to ten. I still have that key I just realized. Not sure what version of Ten I had.

If it's a W7 PRO COA you would have received W10 PRO - Just do the W10 PRO and you should be good. I don't know that you should consider it a "foolish" install. It makes it certainly likely more salable at some point. W10 seems to do well for me, I do wish I had kept my desktop at W7 but I thought "all with the same OS" a plus. My ThinkPads can all go back easily to W7 with restore media.

WVZR1 wrote:

thinkpadgeek91 wrote: My Thinkpad came with Windows 7 and I foolishly "upgraded" to ten. I still have that key I just realized. Not sure what version of Ten I had.

If it's a W7 PRO COA you would have received W10 PRO - Just do the W10 PRO and you should be good.

Installed Windows 10 Pro and it activated by itself. I may have had a problem from the start with this drive. My T420 feels super fast and responsive with this new drive. And the drive I put in it is 6 years old!

Just so everyone knows the AE release of Windows 10, changed the key types of the 'free upgrade' from 7-8.1 users.

Instead of it being an activation file on the drive, its turned into an actual activation that s tied to the Microsoft account. This is to alleviate the problem with installing a new drive and having to beg MS to activate the install. Now you just log into your Microsoft account, and it auto activates.

Though there is apparently a limit to how many times that key will work by that method, but it hasn't been disclosed last I heard.