New Laptop: switching from OEM to retail Windows

[Rare White Ape]

I bought this. It has plenty of grunt.

http://www.mytoshiba.com.au/products/computers/satellite/p70/psppna-09700m

And I would like some guidance from the experts here.

I want to rid myself of OEM bloatware on this machine, which came with Windows 8.1, and switch to nice pristine retail Win8.1.

I've done it before with my previous laptop which ran with Win7, but it wasn't 100% legal for various reasons. My HDD exploded and the OEM recovery image wouldn't work with the drive I replaced it with. So this time I'd like to try and do it fully above-board, if that's possible.

I think the main hurdles involve the product key and locating a proper Win8 ISO.

Sooooo.... not from Teh Pirate Bay.

But before I dive in, I want to make sure this is possible. I've made recovery discs in case I fuck it.

So, is it possible?

[Yw-slayer]

What is preventing you from uninstalling the OEM bloatware?

[mk]

And with enough RAM good behaving bloat is irrelevant.

Boot the machine with live Linux and modify recovery settings in formerly hidden partition.

[Rare White Ape]

What is preventing you from uninstalling the OEM bloatware?

Doing this takes FOREVER, and I'll not be guaranteed of getting rid of everything I don't want. And I really don't want Norton Security Trial Edition in my registry forever.


formerly hidden partition

It comes with a hybrid 1TB HDD + 8GB SSD. Hopefully a fresh install will make the SSD available to me for whatever use I want. At the moment it is not visible in My Computer.

[Jacee]

Download the Norton removal tool http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/norton-removal-tool/ and get the antivirus of your choice.

edit to add: go here to decide which services you want to uninstall, or disable http://support.toshiba.com/support/viewContentDetail?ct=SB&soid=3368363&ref=EV

[Rare White Ape]

Thanks Jacee but yeah, nah.

I'm gunna go with this:

http://superuser.com/questions/697253/clean-install-windows-8-1-or-windows-8-from-oem-key

I've already filled a DVD with the drivers for my new hardware, and I've got a Win8.1 ISO ready to go.

[Yw-slayer]

So, uninstalling bloatware from links provided to you is going to take longer than reinstalling Windows. Got it.

[Rare White Ape]

It's cheaper to buy fuel a little bit at a time as well.

[mk]

Are you sure it's not 8GB SSD cache and so SSHD single drive construction?

[Rare White Ape]

Yeah it's a hybrid. I didn't know much about them but then I read up on them and it turns out the SSD allocation is automatically filled with your most-often used files.

So, not a separate partition like I initially thought.