I'm pretty sure that the Pro COA says Pro, so if it says 8.1 (or 8), your Pro install won't work.
-----Original Message----- From: Hardware [mailto:hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Fisk Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2016 4:08 PM To: hardw...@lists.hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] Windows 8 on a dead HD I think it is likely that the product key in BIOS is for Windows 8 and it was upgraded to Windows 8.1. Have you tried loading Windows 8 and then doing the upgrade? On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Thane Sherrington < th...@computerconnectionltd.com> wrote: > I have a Lenovo desktop with a dead hard drive (completely dead). It > had Windows 8.1, so I put in a new drive and tried to install Windows > 8.1. 8.1 doesn't detect the COA key from the BIOS (although NirSoft > does) and when I enter the key, 8.1 says it isn't valid. So I'm > pretty sure the problem is that the version of 8.1 I'm using (Pro x64 > English) isn't the one that was used by Lenovo (there are about six > different version so 8.1 (Pro, non-pro, English, English International, > Single Language, etc.). > > Anyone know a way to figure out which version it was rather than just > trying every one singly? > > T > > > > >