Series 9 reinstall windows 8 on completely formatted SSD

Greetings,

Due to a corrupt SSD I had to completely wipe it. However I did not know at that time you don't get a license key with your laptop (or was there a sticker on the power cable that I've thrown away?). Now I can't install a new version of windows 8 (which honestly I don't like at all but need it for my work). I followed this guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...stall-windows-8-samsung-series-9-laptops.html, but I can't download such iso, nor do I know what would work for my laptop is I eventually could.
Is there any other way?

Thanks in advance!

 

The Windows 8 key is built into the BIOS.

However, that doesn't help getting hold of an installation disc. Did you ask Samsung support?

John

 

No, and I don't think they're available on sunday. But I guess I'd have to pay for a disk?

 

As an alternative, they might offer to reimage the SSD. I'm a bit surprised that Samsung don't provide some nagware that keep hassling users to use Samsung Recovery Solution to make a backup of the factory image on an SSD. Because they don't do that then you may be able to persuade them to fix your problem at their expense.

John

 

I agree, they should nag about that Factory Image backup.

@hylobates: I would still contact Samsung. We've heard a few reports where they would send Recovery Media (essentially just a Windows DVD). They used to include such a DVD back in the Win7 days, then stopped doing it with Win8 models.

Check this post for some of the few legal ways you can download a Win8 ISO.

Most of them require you to have your Product Key, which is buried in your BIOS. There are tools which can extract that key for you (see this post). You could temporarily install Win7 (which you can download freely from Digital River, and run 30 days before activating) so you can extract the key and download the Win8 ISO (if you're lucky enough to have access).

Otherwise there is this trick for downloading a Win 8.1 ISO from Microsoft -- again requiring your valid Product Key.

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I tried all this, however I couldn't get to install windows. I've contacted samsung support and waiting for answer. However I'm not going to pay them for a recovery disk.
Edit: It will be free, but I have to send my notebook in. They will put a new version of windows 8 on it. Sigh.

 

That's frustrating, I was hoping they would send you that Recovery disk with no charge. It's gotta be less costly for them as well, compared to processing a and re-imaged a machine.

Anyways, when you get it back, I highly recommend you create a Bootable Factory Image Backup as the first thing. It requires a 32GB USB stick (avoid SanDisk), but with that you can re-image the drive yourself anytime, no matter how messed up it becomes. Just follow the first two steps in this post.

 

Good news, I managed to find an original windows 8.0 non pro iso which worked with the licence key stored in the bios. So I have my laptop back! Problem now is I don't find any samsung drivers on the net for my laptop. It's a samsung series 9 np900x3c, but with windows 8 originally installed. I can only find windows 7 drivers for this laptop. I could use some mouse multitouch features.

Oh and I'll create a bacup now.

 

Great, glad to hear you got that working. Samsung hasn't provided updated drivers on the net for over a year. All drivers and software must be installed through SW Update (or downloaded and saved, then installed manually).

This post lists the drivers you want to install with SW Update and the ones you want to do manually.

And this post is a complete install guide, including a link to SW Update. It's primarily for Win7, but has notes wherever Win8 is different. It looks long, but that's only because it covers all the different models.

 

Your responses are amazing, thanks! Got everything to work perfectly!