Windows 8 Installing Windows 8 from scratch on a laptop

[Christian Dysthe]

Hi,

I have a laptop with an empty drive and a separate Windows 8.1 license. No media, only the license. The laptop does not have an optical drive, but can boot from USB. I would like to install Windows 8.1 on this laptop. The person who will use it does not want Windows 10 right now. I thought this would be trivial, but I am simply not able to figure out how to do this. Can I download Windows 8.1 from somewhere and get on to a thumb drive? I have tried to download some images, but it hasn't worked. Could someone please let me know how I could get Windows 8.1 on to this laptop using my license?

 

[kemical]

Hi,
as long as you have your activation key (I'm pretty sure this has to be a 'retail key' not an OEM one) then you should be able to download an iso here:
Creating installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help

 

[Ebm9000]

If you don't, you can always go on a computer running Windows 8.1 (activated preferably, I am not sure if it will work on an un-activated machine) and run the Windows Media Creation Tool (downloadable from Microsoft). You can then select any version of 8.1 to download and save as an ISO or copy directly to a USB drive (<-Will format the drive).