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Backupper boot and license key questions

edited December 2017 in AOMEI Products Support

Howdy,


I have a PC with a 2nd storage. On this storage I made three different system backups with the free Backupper.


Question 1 - boot menu


How can I directly restore 1 of the 3 backups via a boot menu? Of course I can do a restore from Windows or via a bootable device (WinPE). But I would like a built-in menu without having to use a separate bootable device.


Question 2 - windows license key


I made disk backup of this PC. The goal is to roll out this backup over other identical PCs via an external USB. So not through a network. In the current setup I will have to activate the license key for each system backup. This does not seem practical to me. How can I solve this? I understand that the license key can also be stored in the bios, unfortunately I can not find much about this. Is this a software feature or a hardware feature?


Comments

  • edited December 2017

    Q1:

    You want to restore without using external boot media? And you don't want to start Aomei from within a running Windows? 

    You can add the WinPE system to the boot menu so you can start that without external media and without a normal Windows OS. Download the WinPE ISO and download the free EasyBCD software from Neosmart. It has an option to add ISO to the boot menu. It works.


    Q2.

    By License key you mean the WIndows license key? On new pre-installed PC's since Windows 8 (2012/2013) they are probably stored in BIOS, making each PC unique. Windows 8 or 10 reads this key from the BIOS and activates Windows automatically. Prior to Windows 8 each PC (or Windows) came with a sticker with the xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx code. If you want to read the exact code from BIOS for some reason you can do that with free software from Nirsoft called Produkey.

  • Q1


    Solved, it works! great :)


    Q2


    I have clean PCs and bought the keys myself afterwards. How can I put the key in the bios?

  • edited December 2017

    As far as I know you can't, it's is stored in BIOS firmware. You have to enter them in Windows by hand and activate.

    By the way, I noticed something very strange: I have an OEM Win8 machine with the code stored in Uefi/BIOS. When I clone (backup/restore) my Win8 system to another PC (an old BIOS with no code) the license key is transferred with it and the other PC is activated as well....

  • so, in my case i have to activate all 3 backups on every pc? is there some kind off workarround?

  • Misschien kan Microsoft je helpen....

  • Q1


    Doesn't work. I've UEFI pc's en EeasyBCD won't work whith that. Is there a workaround?

  • edited December 2017

    OK, I just saw that adding ISO does only work on BIOS machines. But did you notice the Add WinPE option in EasyBCD? Just click the ampe.iso , explorer opens and then copy the boot.wim file from the sources folder to another location. Then point to this boot.wim in the Add WinPE option. It works on UEFI as well.

  • I've already switched to grub2win. This works fine (nice simpel menu), only i can't figure out how to set the proper variabeles:


    #

    #            This is sample code for booting from an iso file

    #            via the Grub2Win g2wisoboot function

    #

    #            See the Grub2Win help file advanced topics section for more information

    #

        clear

        set gfxpayload=1024x768                             # Needed for many graphics cards

        set isopath=/ampe.iso

        set kernelpath='/** kernel path **'                 # Example '/vmlinuz'

        set initrdpath='/** initrd path **'                 # Example '/initrd.img'

        set bootparms='** your linux bootparms **'          # Example 'boot=/ iso-scan/filename='$isopath' noprompt noeject ---'

    #

        g2wisoboot                                          # Run the g2wisoboot function

    #


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