I received a question from a customer on a website whereby I earn supplemental income answering computer questions.
I have a 5 year old HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23 all in one computer, which was upgraded to Windows 10 during the free period. As a result of a power surge, I had to perform a recovery on the system and as a result now have Windows 8.1. Can that be updated on the same machine without charge, and if so how?
The short answer to their question, is that as long as Windows 10 was installed and activated, then you can reinstall Windows 10 without purchasing a new license. This individual had installed all of the current Windows 8.1 updates. Whenever you uprade Windows operating systems you want to install all available updates first.
You do not need to purchase a new license since you had already upgraded to Windows 10. You should be able to either upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 10 or just perform a fresh install of Windows 10. I am going to describe to you how to upgrade Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 by using Microsoft’s media creation tool.
Please download the Windows 10 installation media creation tool. You do NOT need to create a USB flash drive or DVD disc. You will download Windows 10 using this tool and then once it finishes downloading, then you can upgrade Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.
Download this tool and then and select “Run”. Select “Accept” on the license terms page. Select “Upgrade this PC Now” on the “What do you want to do?” page.
Then you click “Next”. This download can take awhile depending on your Internet connection speed. Microsoft Windows 10 will reboot several times during this upgrade process.
This customer of mine successfully upgraded his computer from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 after performing an HP PC Recovery. Since you already had Windows 10 installed and activated you should NOT be asked to enter in your certificate of authenticity product key. As a possible gold tip you can actually also install Windows 10 updates using the media creator tool.