Lost Window 10 upgrade

[CTnadine]

Last night my Dell laptop was acting so badly, I tried to use a restore point and ended up doing a recovery. Today the "free" Windows 10 upgrade is gone. During the recovery I was given no choice as to whether to save various things, as with reformatting, so after a year, I am back to Windows 8.

I contacted Dell and was told that the Windows Activation Key was built onto the motherboard of my laptop so I don't have that.

It wasn't until I started researching this that I realized my problems were actually due to the Windows upgrade!!!!!

Any suggestions?
Thanks...

 

[Tim Locke]

Microsoft has your machine registered as one that has had Windows 10 free install. You can download a fresh new uptodate version of Windows 10 and install it. I would strongly recommend that you back up all your personal files before you do this. You can find exact instructions on this forum both for recommended backup tools and how to freshly install W10. Search for posts by Trouble.

It would be useful if you told us how your laptop was acting so badly

 

[CTnadine]

Thanks for getting back to me. My computer was having Internet problems: pages would stop loading and I would have to keep shutting down my browser and reopening it several times each night. This started a few days ago...very frustrating!!!

I think I have found the correct posting from Trouble that addresses what I need. I am fairly computer literate but that was a bit over my head, so I have asked my son to translate it into a form of "computer English" I can understand...I have also reminded him he only lives an hour away if that is easier

 

[davidsmith]

If you've created a backup on an external storage device, you can use it to restore your files.