Windows 8.1 iso

Hello, I am wondering could acer staff or anybody perhaphs help me? I have the orginal OEM backup from the acer/gateway recovery on USB 16gb like said before.. but it is 8.0.. I don't want to downgrade to 8.0 if i need to use it again and i have had to use before and it was a huge pain in the butt to install 8.0's updates and install 8.1 again.. Is there a way to get an .iso from you guys for 8.1 with the correct drivers and such or should i just get the windows 8.1 media recovery iso drive maker thing from the microsoft site ( http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media ) and download the drivers from the Gateway.com NE56R41u laptop driver page and put them on the flash drive in a driver's folder and install them one by one after the clean install if ever needed?

Accepted answers

All comments

Sharanji

I definitely know that this could be frustrating, however the USB recovery media can only be created or purchase only for the operating system shipped wiht your computer.

The iso driver maker from Microsoft website is for retail version of windws and will not work for OEM version of windows 8 shipped with your computer.

If you install windows 8.1 using iso image from Microsoft the system may prompt for windows product key.

The product key is electronically stored in the firmware of your mainboard and does not prompt for product key when insatleld using USB recovery media.

The USB recovery media has the Operating System, all the pre-installed Software and the drivers of your system.

The only option is to install windows 8 and update it to windows 8.1 for free using the same product key.

Click the Kudos to say “Thanks” for helping! select "Accept Solution" if your issue is resovled.

coolmichaelrock

Will i be able to use the .iso for windows 10 next month on this computer or will it still need the product key as well?

Sharanji

You will be able to upgrade to windows 10 for free using the same product key if use the same OEM version of windows 8 shipped with your computer and upgraded it to windows 8.1

Click the Kudos to say “Thanks” for helping! select "Accept Solution" if your issue is resovled.

JordanB

Actually.........it may or may not work since you have Windows 8 product key. Microsoft doesn't seem to want anyone using Windows 8. But it would be safer to do what Saranji suggested and wait for windows 10.

JordanB

I looked in to it a little further, and found the link below. According to some folks in that forum, it will now accept Windows 8 OEM key......but previously they would not. That forum is not really official....so I guess you might google to see if you can find more information.

http://www.eightforums.com/windows-8-news/56837-official-microsoft-iso-media-creation-tool.html

Edit: According to the link below, it will work with Windows 8 OEM or Windows 8.1 OEM product key, doesn't matter. It appears that microsoft changed their policy so that it will now work with Windows 8 OEM key.