PC.. problem solving or new?

[giddygoat 10]

My daughter's pc has a blue screen.. graphics card, we reckoned. It's gone for repair, BUT, because our previous guy took the awful Vista off it, and put Windows 8 on, there's nothing to restore it, and we can't find any original disks.. is all lost? We've been told it would be £100 for a new disk alone..

 

The original guy has moved on, so can't get in touch with him, so would we be better just cutting our losses and getting new? If so, which? The cheaper the better, obviously, but on the other hand, it needs to be able to do what teenagers do on there, loads of downloading, etc.. obviously we still have monitor, keyboard etc from the current pc..

 

Hoping someone out there who KNOWS about such things can advise! Thanks.

[Spiky_Head 10]

Follow this link, download the iso and simply burn it to disk.

http://teamwindows8.com/2012/11/download-windows-8-official-iso-from-microsoft/

Then use your existing serial key and your up and away.

[jfish1936 10]

Follow this link, download the iso and simply burn it to disk.

http://teamwindows8.com/2012/11/download-windows-8-official-iso-from-microsoft/

Then use your existing serial key and your up and away.

 

The issue is the "existing serial key"; sounds as though the "guy" may not have left it with them!

Can it be retrieved from the HDD of the machine?

[Spiky_Head 10]

Ahhhh, i get you.

Perhaps this will help

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/windows-8-product-key.htm

[giddygoat 10]

Thanks all, some good stuff!

The only thing is.. I can't use the pc because of the blue screen thing.. any way around that? Oh and daughter corrected me, it's windows 7 that is on hers!

 

---------- Post added 04-04-2013 at 15:24 ----------

 

Oh, and thanks for the offers to bring the pc for repair, but we're not in Sheff now..

[waddler8 10]

graphics card, we reckoned. It's gone for repair

Was it the graphics card? Who had it for repair - what did they say? Can't they back up your files and reinstall the OS for you?

 

Do you have it back now with nothing done to it?

 

What's the BSoD (Blue screen) STOP code?

 

Have you tried safe mode?

 

Start it up, press F8 continually 'til you reach the advanced boot options menu - choose safe mode using the arrow keys on your keyboard and click enter - does it boot into safe mode?

 

If no joy with safe mode, do you see the Option "Repair my computer" in the the advanced boot options - If so you *may* be able to restore the original factory image (If there is one - Vista - And you would lose data though if you don't have it backed up) You won't need the product key.

 

What's the make (Dell, HP etc?) & model no.?

[swarfendor437 14]

In the mean time you could download something like PCLinuxOS to boot live and recover all your data off the machine while waiting for a fix:

 

http://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180

 

Download from here:

 

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/live-cd/

 

 

Go for the KDE 2013-2 as this will have a menu like Windows. If you have an external drive or large capacity thumb drive you can access the Windows drive even in live boot mode with most GNU/Linux live distros - but if the machine was not shut down cleanly before the blue screen then you might be out of luck accessing the Windows drive!

[neeeeeeeeeek 10]

In the mean time you could download something like PCLinuxOS to boot live and recover all your data off the machine while waiting for a fix:

 

http://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180

 

Download from here:

 

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/live-cd/

 

 

Go for the KDE 2013-2 as this will have a menu like Windows. If you have an external drive or large capacity thumb drive you can access the Windows drive even in live boot mode with most GNU/Linux live distros - but if the machine was not shut down cleanly before the blue screen then you might be out of luck accessing the Windows drive!

 

Do you get a kick out of trying to baffle people with limited computer skills? You know full well that nothing you have said above will make any sense to the OP so give it a rest with the linux fanboy nonsense.

 

Give MoZaLaN a shout on his return. If it can be sorted, he will do it for a good price.

[Amarkhan 10]

Give us a call we can get your PC up and running again.