Windows 8.1 OEM activation hassles

[ell]

Was it a bios key or was it from the old hard drive?

I pulled it from the old hard drive, no key in bios. I'll have to remember that on these older win8 dells, if that drive was totally dead I would have had to go to Dell I suppose.

 

[mikeroq]

To clarify:

No, you misunderstood what I said. MJB will NOT work with OEM W8. All major OEM's are storing their SLP keys in BIOS. Go to the link that CLC posted for assistance. No, not all machines running W8 will have the key in BIOS. Remember, W8 can be installed on all kinds of hardware which does not support BIOS/UEFI key storage.

The key stored in the MSDM table of the UEFI firmware is a unique key, like the ones on the COA stickers of the past.

X2F61 1 Label, Gml Inc, Microsoft, Operating System, W8, Consumer

Note it says CONSUMER not OEM up there.

That is what Dell calls the W8 sticker for the non pro edition. The OS is still OEM. If it was pro it would say:

LABEL, GML INC, MICROSOFT, OPERATING SYSTEM, W8, PROFESSIONAL

And where it says all over the internet that W8 will get the product key from the BIOS when you install it, lies all lies. Especially for 8.1 it DOES NOT. Even when I installed W8 non 8.1 I had to pull the key and put it in. Like seriously? M$FT

 

[pcpete]

We have never had an issue and we only do clean loads, never a refresh. Could the issue be you installed in legacy mode? I am only guessing but maybe to read the key from the uefi you need to set it to uefi mode. Again, this is only a guess based on a hunch.

 

[ell]

We have never had an issue and we only do clean loads, never a refresh. Could the issue be you installed in legacy mode? I am only guessing but maybe to read the key from the uefi you need to set it to uefi mode. Again, this is only a guess based on a hunch.

I just did another one and used produkey on it aferwards and the program clearly stated UFEI key, and it worked fine. The other did not and it came from the drive in a usb adapter, no connection to the bios and the weird white product key sticker on the bottom I'd never seen before either. RWeverything has always worked for me otherwise.

 

[pcpete]

Have you tried to use the latest Produkey to see if that can pull it from the bios?

I have had a similar issue with a dell that I could not get to activate no matter what I would try, I even had the Product key. I even contacted Microsoft regarding it and they suggested that I return the laptop to the people my customer had purchased it from. Sadly, that's what I had to do in the end as luckily it was still under warranty.

If the laptop was a lower end one, the issue may have been the product key was for 8.1 with bing, This will not activate with a standard 8.1 install.