Usually you can do this by pressing a key to access a boot menu when you first turn your computer on.

To use your USB (or DVD) installation media however, you need to tell the computer to read and boot from the USB stick instead. Normally of course, you do this using the hard disk where Windows is installed. If you purchased a copy of Windows 8 or 10 from a store, either a physical store or online directly from Microsoft, you should have received a product key when you made the purchase.īooting from USB – The term “booting” means to start the computers operating system.

If this fails, you may need to reinstall the previous version of Windows first and then re-upgrade to Windows 10.

If you upgraded from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, you should be able to use your Windows 7/8 product key. In the latter case Windows should detect this and manually entering a product key should not be necessary. If you purchased a PC with Windows pre-installed, your product key will either be on a sticker on your PC or embedded in the PC itself. Product keys – You may need a product key in order to reinstall Windows 8 or 10. Please contact us if you have difficulty playing any videos.ĭownloading the tool – You can download the Windows 8 version of the Media Creation Tool here or the Windows 10 version here. A small number of our videos may not play correctly in Firefox. Press the ? key to see keyboard shortcuts. This video is compatible with mobile devices. Need help viewing video content? Click here. To start the video presentation, please click on the picture below. The video was recorded using Windows 10, but the process is virtually identical in Windows 8 too. In this video tutorial we’ll walk you through the process of downloading the Media Creation Tool and then creating installation media. You can then take this media to your faulty PC and completely reinstall Windows. This tool will download Windows for you and copy it to either a DVD recordable disc or a USB stick. With the newest versions of Windows you can use the Media Creation tool. You could have tried a friends disc, but this may not have worked unless they had the same model of PC as you.įortunately, this situation gets a lot better in Windows 8 and Windows 10. You could have tried contacting your computer manufacturer for a replacement, but this was often expensive. With Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows, if you lost your Windows installation DVD and needed to reinstall your computer, your options were pretty limited. Reinstall Windows 8 or 10 with the Media Creation tool

Windows media creation tool windows 8