[bobnielsen]

For those who may have lost their key, I came across this in another forum:

For future reference, you can copy and paste the following script into a text editor, then save it as productkey.vbs. When you double click on it to run, it will search the register and decrypt the Windows product key for the installed version of Windows.

Code:
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))

Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End Function

 

[bobnielsen]

I recently bought a cheap ($140 Amazon Prime deal of the day) Lenovo S21E-20 laptop with Windows 8.1. It only has a 20 GB SSD but had the icon for the Windows 10 upgrade. It downloaded the file and then said there wasn't enough room to install. I then tried installing from a USB thumb drive but that also failed. It said it was ~900 MB short but I hadn't added any apps or other files and didn't want to risk deleting something critical. I have used it a bit and 8.1 doesn't seem all that bad after all.

 

[bobnielsen]

I installed W8.1 in VirtualBox on my Mac. When it offered to upgrade to 10 I let it do so. The process completely wiped out the (fortunately) virtual partition. I reinstalled 8.1 and it is running fine. At least it didn't affect the host OS.