Lenovo S405 How To: Re-Install Windows 8 if you have lost your recovery partition

To help some people out... I read some of you formatted your drive and now are stuck without the ability to restore Win 8 if you went to Win 7 before you knew there was an issue, or lost your recovery partition for any other reason. FYI, if you can get your hands on ANY Win 8 disk (doesn't matter if its Professional or the Regular version) and install it, your serial key for Win 8 is hardcoded into your motherboard BIOS. Therefore, if you have access to a disk, you can simply install and it will auto activate and install your pre installed key. No need to spend $90 or more if you don't have to.
If you don't have an external DVD Drive, simply download the Win7 to USB tool from Microsoft (it will work for Win 8) and transfer the disk image to a USB thumb drive (from another PC of course). Then boot from the thumb drive to install. Note: You will have to go into the BIOS to turn OFF UEFI and allow it to boot and install from a thumb drive.
In my experience, I had to turn off UEFI in the BIOS (Get to BIOS by pressing F2 at boot). By turn off, I mean place in "Legacy" mode. Then save and exit and allow to restart. Upon restart, enter the BIOS once again and you should now see your thumb drive appear on the list of bootable devices (the thumb drive has to be connected BEFORE booting into BIOS). Move the thumb drive up the list to be the first boot device, save and exit and you are in business.
Also, if you have access to the MSDN, you can actually download the RTM version of Win 8 which once its installed will auto activate and install using your hard coded serial making it a legit, normal copy.
I tried to write this as more of an overview and less of a "hand-holding" article for the purpose of quick reference. Any questions, please post. I will not provide links to any software mentioned in this article. Search engines are your friend.

After changing from UEFI to Legacy mode the function keys (F2 or Fn + F2) are not working anymore. I can't access the BIOS anymore and boot from the USB. Any idea? Thanks
All Ok now. Please ignore my previous comment

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Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hello,
Perhaps one of the discs is not labeled correctly. Try going through all of them to see if one of them works.
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Aryeh Goretsky
I am a volunteer and neither a Lenovo nor a Microsoft employee. • Dexter is a good dog • Dexter je dobrý pes
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Hi All,
I'm new to this forum and have had a chance to look around a little bit, but haven't really found an answer to the problem that I'm having.
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David Kaff wrote:
Yes, I choose "Format" under the advanced options screen. It seems like it formats, but then I get the same message of "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style." I can continue to click "format" but i keep getting the same error.
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This question was solved.
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When requesting help it is always best to post full Model number and/or Product Number. Get your Product Number from the Service Tag attached to bottom, may be under battery.
Saves a lot of time to have this info posted when you request help rather than having to wait for attention, get the request, post the additional info and wait again...
******Clicking the Thumbs-Up button is a way to say -Thanks!.******
**Click Accept as Solution on a Reply that solves your issue to help others**

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Message was edited by: Shootist007

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