Reuse windows 8.0
 

I have an install of windows 8.0, which is on a hard disk here spread across 6 partitions with all the EFI stuff, and recovery bits.

Is there a way to archive and reinstall that anywhere? I don't have the install CD or key. There is the messing also that gpt enforces UEFI on this Samsung box.

If that copy of Windows came with a system then it can't be legally used anywhere else. The OEM license limits it to that system. Now are they ever going to enforce/care for one license already sold. So it depends on how you feel about piracy, technically you paid for that copy of windows but its only licensed to the one system so if you put it on another it is, by the letter of the EULA, pirating.

Well, I would not be breaking the EULA.
It came with a Samsung laptop. The idea was to install it on the same Samsung laptop as a VM. If I wanted to break EULAs, I would just install a cracked version of windows 7.

The license is tied to the hardware which the OS would no longer be running on. It'd be running on virtual hardware, instead.

Kind of hard to say. You can generally peek into those hidden partitions with a linux live boot. I'd then decide what to do. You can use a usb hard drive and maybe clonezilla to clone it all off. Acronis ought to work also. Even dd > gzip should work. Gparted might even be used to copy partitions.

Now as to being able to use it is a different issue. Some have suggested that you can legally transfer the OS to a VM. Well, you can try. Not sure what will happen. In most things that I've read, you have a OEM copy of windows. Microsoft doesn't support it because their agreement with the OEM states that they didn't sell it, the OEM has support. Now exactly who can fix the HAL or authenticate it to the OEM key is unknown.

It may be possible to get recovery media for a small fee.

OEM installations are tied to the hardware. Pull it off of the hardware (like in a VM) and it'll hit you with licensing errors. I'm about 99.999% sure you won't be able to get it to work, since OEM installations don't have an activation process and there is no key with which to activate it anyway.

I've gotten OEM to run fine under vm's before, the issue is its no longer legal per the EULA.

What media are you talking about? Are you saying that you have a pre-loaded Windows 8 and you were able to clone it to a VM? Or are you saying that you have a DVD of windows 8 that says OEM on it?

Moderator Response
 

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <General> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

I have an installed version on hd split accross 6 gpt partitions: Both windows 8 and the box BIOS are sensitive to disk format - gpt or not. GPT enforces UEFI, which would be a shock to my slackware system.

You can try to image it off using some clone or copy app if you have a free usb or networked location. That should be easy. Now as to being able to use it would be a different issue. On one of those partitions you should have some way to recover the system. Either a linux or microsoft way to boot up and copy back to OEM state. The actual install could be tried to be formed into a virtual hard drive or copied to a virtual hard drive but there is conflicting reports as to if you can get it to work on a VM even with Microsoft's help.

Member Response
 

Hi,

Since the OP will have a product key in the BIOS then look at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/w...windows-8.aspx

&
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1...n-windows.html

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

The question I have is if the key is real. Most OEM keys are meaningless to Microsoft. They are generated by the OEM's.

Member Response
 

Hi,

How To Retrieve Windows 8 OEM Product Key From BIOS
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

Thanks for those links guys. The idea was to archive off this windows, install Slackware & virtual box on the disk, and relegate windows to a VM. I do have a cracked windows 7 archive somewhere, but THAT would bebreaking some EULA somewhere. Probably not mine, but. . .

I will let you know how this works out.

Pragmatically speaking, reinstalling a copy onto another computer is legal ... you simply aren't allowed to avail yourself of more functionality than you actually paid for. Moving a copy to a VM should be okay, too. Moving a bunch of copies to multiple VMs such that all of them are simultaneously available, probably isn't: now you are "availing yourself of" something, in such a way as to evade the obligation to pay for the expanded use. In such a situation, I would: "Just Ask."

(I remember the rather-dumbfounded amazement that I got from Borland's legal-department when I "just asked" about a license point. They were startled to have been asked, and they were grateful. I also noticed that the verbage of their license text changed slightly in the future, to clarify the answer to my point.)

(I also remember when a software company that I then worked-for was busted by Federal Marshals for having hundreds of unlicensed copies of most of their office and development software. I was embarrassed, actually, even though I wasn't personally culpable. "Guys, we are a software company, too! We get very upset when we find that people are stealing our stuff, so ...")

It's well worth checking the fine-print of a particular package. For example, when I bought Logic Pro from Apple, I am specifically entitled to install that copy upon all of "my" machines. And Apple's software is not "phoning home" or rigorously enforcing that restriction. Commercial users, studios and so-forth know perfectly well that they would be insane to fail to keep their bread-and-butter licenses in good order. Apple also knows perfectly well that they're not losing revenue by simply allowing individuals to do what they ordinarily would do anyway. "Make the software very-powerful, easy to license, easy to install, easy to use, and give a friendly smile."

I feel the same way. Although I have yet to see a "friendly smile," Microsoft's license-fees are not outrageous, and, "fair's fair." You really do get what you pay for. And, well, "what's good for the goose, etc." We're in the game of software also. "Do unto others, etc."

As for Windows, I purchase, off-the-shelf, licenses and/or distribution media, and wipe-and-install from this onto every computer, completely trashing any "OEM" installation that might previously be there. I have utterly no use for "OEM." I don't want to "not know" exactly what OS-software any particular machine is running, nor do I want it to be even the slightest bit different from any other, nor do I want to be unable to restore the system to exactly that same state. I purchase the license-codes needed to do this.

Microsoft will sell you licenses in quantity, for use with a smaller number of installation DVDs. "Just ask."

Thanks for your very long reply.
In my experience, asking as you suggest evokes the following responses on the part of whoever he is asked, and whoever he asks:
1. Whatś he trying to put over on us?
2. Who do I ask?
3. Under no circumstances commit yourself. How do I cover myself here?
And it continues up the chain until someone bins the query.

Thatś absolutely not worth a copy of windows-8.0 to go through.

Well, To draw a line under this.
I never did relegate it to the VM, or will I try to. I decided one day to grab the windows 8.1 upgrade while the offer was open. So I threw the windows disk back in for a while. I had to update 8.0 first. That was Friday morning. I have had faster upgrading experiences back in the days of dialup. This is Saturday afternoon, and the box has taken that long about updating (updated, downloaded 562MB to upgrade, upgrade crashed out and it reversed all updates); then updated 8.0 again, upgraded to 8.1 (3.65Gb this time), installed it, configured it, asked me all the same silly questions again. I now have 3 gigs of windows.old/, and nearly 17 gigs of windows (!!).

The evil day may come when I may be driven to to battle with it. until it does, it can go back into cold storage.

Windows 8 to 8.1 upgrade is about 3 gigs, if I remember correctly. And on my internet speed, that was a half-day affair. Then it took the rest of the day to install, then I had to re-do the Windows Setup... And by the time that Win8.1 finished updating from Windows Update, the boot time had at least doubled, maybe tripled. (Normal boot time was extremely fast for Windows...less than 8 seconds) So I reinstalled from the recovery partition (which set be back to 8.0...) installed ONLY the updates required to make 8.1 avalible, upgraded to 8.1, and disabled updates. Yes, I know this will make Windows even more insecure than it already is, and I don't really care anymore. Soon after that, I installed Arch. And boot time doesn't increase with updates, and it doesn't really matter anyway, because I rarely need to reboot it anyway.

Or you could have mercy on the hardware, drop any LiveCD into it, get to a root prompt, and do
NOTE: don't do this as a joke, it wipes the entire drive.
At least after doing this your laptop will be free of Windows. At this point, you may insert your favorite Linux install CD and have fun. :D

Well, to give you the full story: windows 8 is super unproductive;
installed updates
installed more updates
hit the upgrade button - 562 MB
This installed, barfed, and then reversed all updates in a most leisurely fashion. It's not short of memory, nor disk space, so I am at a loss to explain the many hours it spent. I turned it off at 11:30 p.m. when it finished
Day 2:
All updates
upgrade - 3.65MB
and it installed thisBrightness Bug

So I'm not the only with Win8 laptop backlight quirks?

My hardware buttons work in Windows, nowhere else (not even BIOS...). In Linux, I get around it by something similar to what you do. I just have it in a script, and to change the backlight I just do "sudo scripts/backlight-set [number between 2 and 937]" and my backlight changes... It's a surprisingly effective workaround, but I got really annoyed at typing my password all the time, so I now have passwordless sudo. Once again, Windows making computers insecure, even when it's not runnung!

I had an analogous experience trying to "download-only" the OS/X Mavericks update, although that experience went smoothly once the many-gigabytes of data were transferred.

A problem, as I see it, is that the Internet ... in most places, such as "outside Cupertino and Redmond" :) ... is simply not yet fast-enough to make downloads of this size practicable. And, operating system updates are not the sort of thing that you really want to "download and hope." I had the foresight to dig into the docs to learn how to make a disk(-image) of the Mavericks update, onto a USB stick that I later transferred to a recordable DVD ... and, I am very glad that I did, because the first update "hiccuped" and left me with a dead-box and (whew!) a bootable stick.

As much as software manufacturers want to forget that "physical media" (and shipping, warehousing, etc ...) exists, we're not quite there yet.

The only thing preserving that disk with windows-8.1 is the fear that some future day I may need a UEFI protected OS for something unspecified and unforeseen. Some of the software around electronics is windows only and has more license policing code than software. Look at National Instruments if you don't believe me.

Or just look at the EULA, it is written out there:http://download.microsoft.com/Docume...6e0e0260a6.pdf

You can copy it off right now. You may not need the entire disk. You should be able to purchase for a small fee a recovery media. It may be that you can create one now.

" reinstalling a copy onto another computer is legal ..." In most places, this is considered true and we accept that as fair use. My only concern has always been that the install may require an activation. It would be easy to test this on the system right now using a virtual machine. Get the recovery partition and run it in a virtual machine. Your virtual machine bios is not the same as the system bios. An that may not be exactly what authenticates the OS. It can be tied to something like 6 items.

Thanks for the ingenious ideas which I always appreciate, but no.

It stays out of sight and out of use until I find I need the &*@£! thing, or until the pc dies. The idea of windows 8 in a virtual machine now just encourages me to throw up. Sorry.

I don't blame you...but if you feel this way, why even start the thead? :D

Can just run a linux in a vm in windows and almost never see windows.

Because I wanted to have the use of the hd. Given that windows-8.0/8.1 has 6 partitions, along with all the recovery and uefi nonsense, I wanted some of the disk back; I wanted to use the other 500G. But I've stopped wanting it. Some day, I may need windows, I may just need efi, so the disk can wait.

Windows is too unefficient at memory management to be a good VM host. The guest OS is just too slow as the windows host spends most of its time swapping.
The other way around works well though.

Not sure I agree. Windows has some proven times in their server market and Windows 8 is not dramatically different. Where is the data you have for this claim?

I've never seen a Windows Server machine, so I'll stay away from that one...:)

I think I disagree with the part about Windows 8 not being dramatically different. It sounds like you've had experience with Windows, so I'm assuming that you've had experience with both Win7 and Win8. I looked up pics of Gnome2 and Gnome3, and I think it's fair to say that the change from Win7 to Win8 is similar to the change from Gnome2 to Gnome3. I wasn't using Linux at the time, but from what I've read there was a big dispute over the new look because it was too different, and IIRC there was a fork. I'm not sure I would label the change "dramatic," but it is definitely a significant change. (And from what I've seen of the world's response, the change was too much for a lot of Windows users.)

That's absolutely fair to say, the change is very similar. And in both cases, it was a gigantic step backwards IMO. I refuse to use Gnome 3. I've tried it, I hated it. Distros that offer Gnome 2 (or Gnome classic I think they call it now) I'll use, otherwise it's xfce for me. As for Windows, 7 isn't too bad, but I dread the day when I have to use 8 because 7 isn't an option anymore. The only computers I buy are laptops (the rest of them I build), and they're generally business grade, and most of them still offer Windows 7 as an option so I'm not hosed yet, but the day is coming...

That said, user interface and memory management are two distinctly different aspects of an operating system.

True, what I meant was the underlying design of the OS and not the gui.

Installs and use are the only way to test. Hardware is so different between users that almost no compare can be made.

I still have a few copies of Windows 7 to help keep me off the Windows 8 radar.

My experience of them is greatly different.
windows XP seemed to run 30 mins - 2 hours for a setup/reconfigure. This was an improvement on the 6 floppy windows 3.1 but not much different from win 95/98
Windows vista approximately doubled that.
Windows 7 seemed around the same. I only ran one install of that.

Windows 8 spends ages after it has installed anything sorting itself out. It is amazing how long it takes. There was a warning to leave the thing plugged in, and now I know why. Reversing updates took about 6 hours. Installing them also took about 6 hours. No danger of them downloading one, installing it while downloading a second, etc. No it was a plain sequential bash script type thing, except slower.
I think they have discouraged piracy by slowing down the install so much.

BTW my technical questions are answered and my decisions made, but you guys chat away, and don't let that disturb you.

I'm sitting here on my work owned windows 7 laptop. It has 8G of ram so it takes a good 5 minutes to resume from hibernation in the morning. Then its up but you can't use the mouse or keyboard for another 5 minutes while it run the hdd. Then finally you can login and then the taskbar is greyed out for another 5 while it runs the hdd crazy. I still miss windows 2000 when windows was fast.

Get a SSD

Its a work owned laptop so I wouldn't buy any hardware for it.
Besides I swapped the drive in my personal laptop for an ssd and while its a little faster they don't make that much of a speed increase. Its hardly noticeable under Linux since Linux does efficient memory management and doesn't try to swap all the time. Windows biggest issue is it wants to swap all the time so no matter how fast the drive disk i/o is still slower then ram.

Member Response
 

Hi,
I find a SSD that has been optimized for the system does provide a major time advantage for either Gnu/Linux or Windows OS. Not just boot times but operational duties are much faster than a HDD. As to swappiness, you can control that with Gnu/Linux and MS Windows. Running swap on a SSD is no longer a issue with newer SSD controllers and cel type (MLC or SLC) having better MTTF & MTBF numbers.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

I looked at those threads where people talked about if an ssd needs optimized or not and is doesn't seem there is anything that needs to be done. I can see a slight speed different when booting my personal laptop but I rarely reboot. If I install new packages its a little quicker but i don't do that a lot either. Day to day use hasn't increased any. But again the i/o is the limit now, the sata bus speed on older laptops will limit speed that data can flow to the ssd.

WRT to swappiness in Windows, Windows 2000 had the reg key to control that and it worked well as a virtual machine host but XP and newer removed support for that reg key and ignores it.

I have an ssd for some time. The "Optimisation" I read about was about concerning atime, to stop endless disk writes to the same sectors. Day to day you don't notice a lot. But run a large cp, run slocate -u or e2fsck and you will notice a huge difference. I suppose gamers would notice it. But that is not me.