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Extracting Windows information from offline disk

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Ok, I'm servicing a laptop for a friend that has a HDD on a way out. It still works, but has bunch of setor pending and it won't boot, but is still accessible via portable enclosure on USB.

I can install new drive no problem and reinstall Windows because it came with Windows 8 originally. But I don't know if it had vanilla Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or it has even updated to anything new. Because I need to install the same edition and I don't know which one it was since it wasn't my system. Is there a way to extract this data from an offline HDD ? Windows key is baked in firmware and on MS servers so that's no problem, but I need same edition it was installed last. How to do I find out what edition it was?
 
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you should be able to do a version check on the DLL's in olddrive:\windows\system32 to find out if it was 8 or 8.1
 

INSTG8R

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Ideally just getting a cmd prompt would give you a version. Not sure how that would work tho.
 
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Case Corsair 500r
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Keyboard a cheap dell
Ideally just getting a cmd prompt would give you a version. Not sure how that would work tho.
upload_2016-9-25_22-26-13.png
 

Kursah

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What brand is the laptop? If its Lenovo, Dell, some HPs and others have a warranty or service tag. You can at least use that to lookup the build which will provide the deployed OS.

An ISO of 8 and 8.1 should be easy to get from MS...so at worst a couple DVDs or a couple passes on a USB if you make the wrong flip of the coin.

You could also use cloning software or make a backup image from the original drive if it'll still do reads without major issues.
 
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Ok, I'll check the version of CMD. Getting ISO images later won't be an issue (have them archived anyway since Win7), I just don't want to spend 4 hours trial and error installing different editions. I already predict it's a Home Edition, but not what version of it.
 
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can you force recovery mode? it should give you the info you want
 
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Nope, can't get the drive to do anything. I can work with it via external USB enclosure, but won't boot or run recovery from original laptop. I'm gussing critical files have been corrupted.
 
Joined
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System Name Gaming Desktop
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Motherboard asus rog alpha
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Memory Corsair Dominator 16gb DDR4 3200
Video Card(s) GTX 1080
Storage EVO 840 500gb, EVO 850 500gb, Perc 710 Raid WD RED 4tbx4
Case Corsair 500r
Power Supply Antec 850
Mouse Logitec G502
Keyboard a cheap dell
Nope, can't get the drive to do anything. I can work with it via external USB enclosure, but won't boot or run recovery from original laptop. I'm gussing critical files have been corrupted.
bummer.
 
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