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I have a drive that I cannot boot, but it has an installation of Windows 8 on it. I need to know what type of Windows 8 it has. Is there a folder or file I can look at that might give me a clue as to the flavor of 8 (Standard, Pro, Enterprise, or RT) I need to use for a recovery installation?

Since the OS is not booting even in safe mode I can only use command prompt. Thanks.

Arti
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1 Answers1

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It will be stored in the registry. You can load the registry hive through another Windows installation.

Usually the registry is stored in C:\windows\system32\config\. You will need the file software. Make a copy of this somewhere for temporary use.

  1. Open regedit: Win+R -> regedit
  2. Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  3. Click File -> Load hive
  4. Navigate to your copy of software
  5. Give it any name, but NOT software (I don't think it would let you do that anyway. Call it recover for the sake of this example.
  6. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\recover\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\
  7. In here you should find all the version information you need.

To give you an example, on my machine I get:

Product Name: Windows 10 Pro

Edition ID: Professional

  1. When you're done, click on recover again, followed by File and Unload Hive
Jonno
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