Changing my drive is a sensible solution, but is it possible on pre-built machines? I'm using an HP Pavillion.

Yes, hard drives r still upgradable for pre-built systems but u need use the recovery cds. I hv upgraded my laptop hard drives twice before & they work w/o problems.

I think I'll do that, thanks! I apologize if this is a stupid question but would a recovery disc transfer absolutely everything? I've got 500 gigs of data (17 gigs left).

If you're wondering how I filled up 500 gigs there's my games, my documents, my sister's stuff (I have four), and my parents' stuff; on the odd occasion my friend would stop by and use it too.

Erm, the recovery disc ONLY transfer or rather reinstall ur OS with all the necessary drivers for ur pre-built systems. EVERYTHING else u wld need to backup somewhere else (say cloud storage or an external hard drive). However, if u hv an image cloning software such as Acronis True Image or similiar u can use it to literally clone EVERYTHING in ur older hard drive to the new one. In this case, there wld be no need to reinstall using ur recovery cds. This way is actually better & recommended. :)

USB 3 can transfer data faster than the a spinning disk can supply it, and the latency it adds is negligible (in hard disk terms). So if a modern game can work with an internal HDD it should work with a USB 3 one.

(In practice USB 3 drives tend to be slower than internal ones, but games rarely suffer greatly from a slow drive.)

I don't know why, but the two times I've tried using my recovery media (USB flash drive), it failed. Both on an ASUS laptop, and on a HP laptop. I don't even recall the errors, the recovery just wouldn't work (I think the recovery media itself was ok, but the process just wouldn't work properly).

Either I am the unluckiest guy on the face of the earth, or those PC vendor specific "recovery medias" are generally flaky and shitty.

Based on my experience, I will not rely on those damn "recovery medias" anymore. So whenever I've needed to reinstall Windows, I haven't done it until I've been sure I can do a complete clean reinstall from scratch, that seems to work.

I think for Windows 8.1 and 10 you can create a bootable installation DVD or USB flash drive with a MS media creation tool.

For Windows 7, you must obtain a Windows installation DVD or USB media for your specific Windows 7 version, and have your Windows product key available (either on a sticker of your PC, or fetch it from your current Windows installation with some third party tool).

Earlier you could get the Windows 7 installation ISOs from digitalriver site, but Microsoft discontinued that site at some point. Now you are supposed to be able to download such ISOs from the Microsoft site, BUT it will not work with a product key for a preloaded Windows 7! The MS page will then just tell you you should contant your PC vendor to get a recovery media, you know those things that don't work for me.

Luckily for me, I've kept a Windows 7 ISO (from digitalriver) on my own hard drive so I can reinstall Windows 7 again clean if I need to, and then activate it with my product key. God damn, why is Windows reinstallation made so hard? In Linux I never have these kind of issues, wrong edition or product key or whatever...

Hmmm, i dunno if u were unlucky or wat but i didn't hv any issues using the recovery cds that came with my old (or rather, ex-) laptop. I got to mentioned though that my OS then was WinXP Pro & i wasn't prompt to enter any product key. Too bad i didn't hv any image cloning software that time, if not i could hv saved the hassle, not to mention hrs of reinstalling all my other software again.

Anyway, my experience using recovery media were generally gd unless u count the time i accidently broke the cd by sitting on it & hving not make a backup copy before that. Argh, lol. I guess it could just be either u or me, as in each person's experience with using recovery media is different so really not much to judge who's 'right' or 'wrong'.

*Shrugs*

Eh, there's torrent around if we need ISOs. :D

And with Windows 10 it's very easy now to reinstall. Unless the HDD is broken, you just need to reset. Even when the motherboard is fried and gets replaced entirely, as long as the HDD is intact, there won't be any bluescreen preventing OS from being loaded. Been there done that, I am content with how Windows 10 handles this situation.

Here we don't get any physical "recovery CD" with our laptops (which come preloaded with Windows). Instead, the laptop instructions state that you should create such recovery media yourself, either to a DVD-R or an USB flash drive, with a tool that is installed on your preloaded Windows. It is usually said this should be the first thing you do when you start using the laptop, creating a recovery media.

Also at least with the HP laptop, there was some oddly stupid restriction that you have only ONE shot at creating that recovery media. What the heck was that about? So if that media creation process either fails or that media itself later gets corrupted or misplaced, oh well, you can't create a new recovery media. I guess the only option then is to order a new recovery media from the vendor, if they still provide them or are even around anymore.

Since all current Windows versions need to be authenticated online anyway, I have absolutely no idea why there are such arbitrary restrictions how many times you can create a recovery media and blaa blaa blaa. Same goes to that MS download page for Windows 7 ISOs, why exactly does it refuse to let you download the ISO if your product key is "only" for preloaded OEM Windows? Why is there such a product key check anyway? It isn't like you can use the Windows very productively anyway until you activate it with a legit product key after installation, so piracy can't be the reason, can it?

With Linux I just download the ISO, create a bootable media and install.

In that Windows 8.1 HP laptop, that didn't work either (I think Windows 8.1 has a similar reset option as Windows 10). The machine and HDD were ok as far as I can tell, but the Windows 8.1 installation had become somehow corrupted that before the Start/login screen would appear, you'd get only a black screen (I think the mouse pointer was visible though).

As said, the vendor recovery media didn't work. Then I was able to get to some kind of safe mode and try that Windows 8.1 reset/reload from there, but for some reason that didn't work either. I don't quite recall what was the issue. maybe it was that the problem wouldn't go away even if you reseted the Windows 8.1 installation.

Anyway, my solution was to create a Windows 8.1 installation media on an USB flash drive on another PC (using the MS media creation tool) and do a complete clean install with it. At least that worked, damn it. Right after that I updated it to Windows 10 with the free upgrade.


EDIT: Also, the guy was supposed to replace the hard drive with a bigger one... so how exactly would the Windows 8.1/10 reset work for that anyway, for "reinstalling" Windows? Isn't that reset meant only for cases where you want to start over on your current hard drive when the OS is already installed?

Actually it is the same over here. I kind of noticed laptop only came with recovery cds for Win XP, aft that fr Win 7 onwards we all hv to create our own recovery media either on cd/dvd/flash drive (meaning whichever we choose). Or perhaps it could be that the cds only came say pre-2005 cos i'm not totally sure if any laptops that shipped with Win XP installed aft that came with recovery cds or not.

Anyway, i think the pt is MS probably wants a tight rein on the no. of ISOs that we can get esp for OEM models as they might be afraid we somehow find a way to 'activate' them offline or thru some crack/hack?

Watever the reason, as long as we use genuine MS software we dun really hv to care or bother too much with that issue. It may be more troublesome but it dun matter much to me as long as i can get my copy of Windows to work. The more worrying thing is the limit of being able to create only the recovery media 1 time on the 1st try cos if something somehow goes wrong we r screwed.

Reply to Edit: Well, that's y i suggested the method of using image cloning software. That way, he dun hv to worry abt reinstalling everything all over again. ;)

Good call. Now you already have permanent activation so you can reinstall or reformat as you please on that machine. :D

Well, it certainly caused me problems when I wanted to re-install legit Windows 7 on one laptop. There was no recovery media from the vendor (at least that laptop owner wasn't aware of it), I didn't see any tool installed on her Windows 7 PC to create recovery media either...

Then I tried to download Finnish Windows 7 from the MS pages using her product key, but it said I am not allowed to download the ISOs as the product key is for an OEM (pre-installed) Windows 7, instead I should contact the PC vendor for recovery media. That was some old cheapo Emachines(???) laptop, no idea if they were still/ever providing any Windows 7 recovery media for it, and I didn't feel like paying for such service either. Why should I pay to just get a damn legit Windows 7 reinstalled???

My solution then was:

- Fortunately I already had a Windows 7 Home ISO, originally downloaded from that digitalriver site that MS later discontinued. I was able to install and activate Windows 7 fine using it.

- The remaining problem was that it was English Windows 7, and the owner of the laptop wanted Finnish Windows 7, like she originally had. Windows 7 doesn't allow changing the system language unless you have some freaky Ultimate Edition or something, there was apparently some option to change some of the language on that edition, but not all of it.

- However, googling for it, I was able to find a third-party tool that allowed just that, changing Windows 7 Home system language with the MS language packs. Phew, problem solved, jumping through many hoops because of the various arbitrary stupid-ass restrictions MS had put on their various editions.

I think that's the same both with Windows 8.1 and 10. It is only Windows 7 (or earlier) where you need some sort of product key which you need to type in to activate your Windows online.

The reason I updated it to Windows 10 was because it sucks less than Windows 8.1. :) That HP laptop came preloaded with Windows 8, there was no option for Windows 7 even if I wanted to. On my gaming laptop, I still have Windows 7 though, but even there I have once installed/activated Windows 10 so that I can indeed install Windows 10 on it later for free, if I want.

I think it is more probable though I will never turn that particular PC to a Windows 10 PC, no good incentive to do that. It will remain as a Windows 7 gaming PC as long as it works, my future PCs will have Windows 10 anyway by default.

Do you have access to a desktop computer? If yes, bootable Acronis true image is way to go. You clone the entire disk to the new disk, with options to keep partition sizes, increase them by percentage, set new sizes... You just pop your new disk back in and voila, everything works, and everything is where you left jt.

I was in a similar situation once & what I went with was adding a second internal HD (2TB) just for games