Setup Installation :: Fresh 8.1 Install But Unable To Activate Windows
May 20, 2014
I bought a new laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed (and immediately updated it to 8.1).
I decided after a week to buy an SSD and installed Windows 8.
I now find there is no product key to be found, and can't seem to activate Windows.
1. I've tried a few things. I tried to enable UEFI in PC Settings, but the setting isn't there (does this mean my laptop doesn't support UEFI?)
2. I entered my BIOS. CWM was enabled, and pwe enable. But SECURE BOOT disabled. So I enabled SECURE BOOT, but regardless of what options I select, the laptop keeps booting into the [Legacy] BIOS, possible because there are no BOOT OPTION PRIORITIES found any longer?
My problem is activating windows, and if UEFI is an option, enabling it.
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Nov 4, 2014
My store manager says it can't be done, but I feel there's a way...the problem is of course 8.1 requires different product keys than 8.0 -- where upgrading to 8.1 also changes the product key -- so 8.0 install media won't take 8.1 keys and visa-versa. So when you only have an 8.0 key, you have to first install 8.0 and then upgrade to 8.1; this is a bit weird because 8.1 is essentially a service pack; first "8.1", then "Update 1", what's next for the rebranding of service packs? I can only fathom they did this to cement their new "rapid release" cycle for consumer editions of Windows.
Note: "Easily activate" means not having to call Microsoft to fix the activation.
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Nov 1, 2012
I tried using this method:
-After installation disconect from internet
-change in registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE -> Change "MediaBootInstall" from "1" to "0"
-type "slmgr /rearm" into a command prompt, waited for confirmation, restart
-after restart, connect to internet, activate
This works fine until rebooting and then asks for activation again.
I have tried three more times without reinstalling and the MediaBootInstall stays at 0 so it doesn't need changing. I type the slmgr /rearm and on reboot when I go to activation menu it says activated, but when I reboot agian it says needs activation.
Not sure what's going on. I thought it was a windows update at first messing with it, but it still does it even without any updates being installed.
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Jun 29, 2013
I decided to make a fresh install with a iso from the download page and use the key that they provide on that same page. Windows 8.1 Preview ISO files - Microsoft Windows. I tried english 64bit...
Running from windows 8 seamed to work but i didnt have 6.8 GB free .. So I go to boot from the iso and format the partition. But got the message saying , the key is invalid ... tried my own genuine windows 8 pro key .. also didn't work.
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Mar 29, 2014
I am currently running Windows 8.1 and I want to do a clean install back to Windows 8. I have the original 64-bit Windows 8 Pro DVD. I put this DVD into my DVD drive and rebooted. I then went into the BIOS and made sure the first boot device was set to DVD/CDROM.
When I restart my computer it never gives me the option of booting to the DVD it just takes me back to the Operating System (my login screen).
My question is, how do I get my system to bootup from the Windows 8 Pro DVD so that I can do a fresh install?
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Jul 19, 2013
Bought a Sony Vaio Pro 13 and as per usual with all my new laptops, a fresh install is done.
So on i went armed with my USB with Windows 8 created from an iso file from the microsoft site (i have msdn access).
The iso is a "multiple version" iso which has Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro (en-gb_windows_8_x64_dvd_915412.iso)
Normally i would expect at the end of the install for the screen to allow me to enter my serial which in turn actives/deactivates features but for some reason, it has not this time round.
instead, the properties of my computer suggest a serial has already been entered "Current product key" *****-66ABC
Now i know i can "add features" and enter the serial that way but my question is, where is it picking the old serial from? i can only guess that the old serial is the one the laptop came with which is Windows 8 and not Windows 8 Pro.
The install was normal in terms of removing all partitions ( left the windows re and the sony recovery) so is it picking it up from there somehow?
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Mar 7, 2013
I swapped the HDD with a new blank SSD in T530 and booted it with the recovery USB of windows 8. System boots from the USB and gives refresh, reset, and other options. However, when I select reset ( to fresh isntall the OS on the SSD), it fails saying a required partition is missing. What! I'm using a blank SSD, shouldn't the installer present me with options to format and use the drive rather than erring out?
Is there any better way of installing the windows 8 os on a new blank SSD using the recovery USB?
I do have gParted live USB. If nothing works, I will partition the SSD using gParted and try the Windows 8 recovery USB again.
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Jul 8, 2013
So I've ordered a whole new system and am looking to only take the SSD from the old computer, but I want to format it so I can start anew, I've got windows 8 and I'm not sure how I go about activating it on the new system and all that.
I've got the key that I had to use for the first installation, would I just plug that in again? or will it come up with "being used" or something similar?
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May 3, 2014
I bought a new HP x360. As expected it comes with a slow drive loaded to the gills with bloatware. So I planned from the beginning to install a fresh copy of 8.1 on a SSD.
I used a new SSD and without doing too much reading created a bootable usb from the 8.1 upgrade with key link. Unbeknownst to me is that the win 7 machine I used (where I previously created a usb key for win 8 pro) is also a pro install that retained the previous key. It never asked for a key when creating the usb. So I ended up with a pro install on the HP laptop and I could not enable the key associated with the laptop.
Thus I started over. I tried various things to create a non-pro usb and had a lot of problems and tried various things. I ultimately succeeded in creating a x64 core 8.1 usb. Now my challenge is that I cannot see the SSD anymore. Even in diskpart I cannot see the ssd. At some point while the ssd was still available (but my install usb did not work due to wrong key) I ran diskpart with the following:
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs
assign
Since then I could not see the ssd. I have tried the following:
-Put original disk back in. Install Paragon. Clone install over to ssd. Put ssd back in laptop. "No bootable device found"
-Put ssd in win 7. Run diskpart. Clean All. Convert GPT.
It is possible the problem lies in the bois. The model laptop is brand new. I updated the bios (it was 2 versions old). But HP site had no explanation of what changed in bios. I also enabled legacy support.
BTW the only way I can create a bootable usb is with Zotac WinUSB maker. Even with win7 usb maker the drive is not recognized. With Zotac I can enable EFI. If I create the image without EFI the laptop does not see it (again even if legacy support is enabled).
So to summarize;
With official 8.1 upgrade image and fresh SSD I could install
After that with 8.1 iso and drive cleaned with diskpart I cannot see drive
I tried again with the upgrade win 8.1 with product key and it worked again. Then I again tried with the ISO. But it still will not recognize the ssd. I get "a media driver your computer needs is missing". A common problem for this is using usb3. I tried with usb 3 and 2. When I shift=f10 and list disk I do not see the ssd.
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Jan 30, 2013
I just purchased a neww 120 intel 520 ssd to load win 8 pro on and here is my question. I loaded win 7 and all updates then used the upgrade dvd I bought for win 8, I was under the impression from what I have read that it was only supposed to use about 20 gigs of the drive mine however is using 33.5 gigs of the 111 that the drive has? All that I can see that it has other than the os is it loaded the most current nvidis drivers for my graphics card but that should not be 13.5 gigs! What did I do wrong on this install and how can I fix it?
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Jan 13, 2013
I have Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate installed and activated. I am trying to upgrade to Windows 8 and the upgrade assistant tells me it needs at least 2gb when I have 8gb and Windows 7 sees and knows I have 8gb
I am thinking it could be my bios, but it's already at the latest version
Here are some photos from my bios, so you can tell me if there is anything I need to enable.
These are photos from my bios. I need to change to get this to work.
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Jul 31, 2014
I own a Lenovo Y580 Ideapad that came with Windows 8 preinstalled, so I was never given a license key or CD, and I am trying to use the SSD as my main drive by doing a clean install of Windows 8 there and then copying over any other files I want from my HDD.
I downloaded a Windows 8 iso file and verified the hash so I know it was a clean file. I burned that iso to a flash drive using Rufus, following all of the instructions in this post: UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows
When I attempted to boot from the flash drive my computer would hang at the Lenovo start up screen (black screen with Lenovo written on it) and then start flashing on/off every 5 seconds for a minute or two and then hang at the start up screen once more indefinitely. It would not let me F2 to BIOS when I turned it on or F12 to Boot device selection.
So, I formatted the flash drive and then followed this post: Create Bootable USB or DVD with Windows 8 ISO Once again, no dice. Same problem. I tried putting my HDD as the very last boot option, enabling Legacy boot mode, etc etc but still haven't been successful. The iso I used was an x64 Windows 8 (core I believe? Just regular). I am currently downloading the 8.1 iso to see if that will work.
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Feb 17, 2013
Windows 8 clean install crashes on first screen
Side note - I succeeded on installing Windows 8 on that particular laptop using UEFI, but NOT legacy. No matter what I tried it failed.
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Aug 19, 2014
Its a HP Envy laptop with a 1TB HDD running on windows 8. But the laptop has been having a lot of start-up errors and finally some files corrupted and windows wouldn't function properly. So I decided to reformat it to 8.1, a complete wipe to get rid of all the pre-installed HP crap.
So here's what I've tried, in the same order.
> I tried to install windows 8.1 through windows 8. -It failed after it restarted-
> I tried to install windows 8.1 through USB ontop of the Windows Partition (There were 5 partitions). -It failed because of a GPT (If I remember correctly) Partition error-
> I decided to delete all the partition and install Windows 8.1 ontop the entire 1TB disk space. -It started installing but then failed with an error code 0x80070057-
> I tried diskpart through CMD to clean the disk drive then followed with a format to ntfs -It always just sticks on 0 percent%-
> I tried all the same steps with Windows 7 -The exact same errors happen-
I've got one last option, plug the HDD into my desktop and try to format it that way but this is a lot of work so I'd like to keep it as a last resort.
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Jul 22, 2013
I'm trying to install Windows 8 on my sister's desktop which has a Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H. I bought a new Samsung 830 SSD and it is being detected but with SATA I 1.5. When I try to format the drive it crashes and reboots.
I tried running the installer on an OCZ solid 3 which is what is running Windows 7 and the installer also crashes. Is there a way I can get the error before it reboots the installer?
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Jan 29, 2013
I tried a clean install on my system which has a Gainward GT430 (nVidia GT430) 1GB display adapter. What happens is that soon after booting from the DVD the display becomes corrupted (blurred and difficult to read) and I can only barely make on what's on the screen and proceed with the installation.
After the point where I format my drive, windows looks like its installing but after the reboot the display goes to sleep, and I have to start over.
On the same system installing Windows 7 had no issues whatsoever. Installed fine with nearly all the drivers available natively to windows. I was installing Windows 8 64 bit using original media.
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Jun 14, 2014
From many days i was trying to make backup but i was not able to make than i found that my Master File Table it corrupt which located in System Reserved.
Than i thought of Re-Installing Windows than i Formatted System Reserved Drive & My C Drive.Now I am not even able to Install Windows.
Error Shown by the Windows Setup - Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition.
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Oct 25, 2013
i try to install the update from the store it freezes at "setting up a few more things" usually at 76% but one time at 6%. My computer meets the requirements, all drivers latest.
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Aug 29, 2014
I'm having trouble with installing Java. My PC mentioned that my java version is too old and that i need to download and install the latest version, but when i do. it reports an error of being unable to download it.
Here is what it said, unable to download [URL] .... for installation.
It won't let me take a screen shot.
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Jan 9, 2014
I know you can activate a clean install of win 8.1 with a win 8 product key but you see, I don't have one - I only have the WMC upgrade key that got installed over it when the previous owner of my PC added the Windows Media Center feature (which I read was free once upon a time). You see I have a retail Windows 8.1_RTM_x86.iso disk image and I want to be able to do a clean install.
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Jun 18, 2013
I just bought a 1TB hard drive and want to install windows 8 on it (since I'm used to it already) I have the files for windows 8 on my computer ready to be put on the new hard drive, but thing is, how would I do it? would I just use a simple USB stick and plug it in? or would i have to burn the files on a disk?
Amazon.com: WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache - WD10EZEX: Computers & Accessories.
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May 21, 2014
Today I updated my Windows pro 8 PC to 8.1. Now it shows activate the license. When I'm running "Windows Vista - 7 - 8 - 8.1 KMS Activator Ultimate 2014 v1.8" tool, it shows following error.
.net_framework.pngWin license issue.png
This too display it successfully activated the Windows, but "System properties" windows shows it's not activated. Previously I used Windows loader to activate the Windows 8 pro.
I have Windows 8 pro 9600.
.NET Framework error log:- .net_framework.txt
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Jun 17, 2013
With windows 7, we were able to use windows loader during the install the pre-activate the OS and if it was a OEM based pc it could be setup to use all the logos etc etc, I was wondering if there is something like that for windows 8? or at least activate it during the install without having to manually do it with microsoft toolkit?
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Jan 20, 2013
I just got a new laptop, a Lenovo X230, for which I paid extra to have the OS on it as Windows 8 Pro.
So--now I have it, and Win 8 Pro 64 is installed and activated on it. I am a legal owner of Win 8 Pro.
However, I would like to do a clean install of Win 8 on the computer, to have it free of bloatware, etc. (In fact, I would like to set up a multi-boot with Win 7, and perhaps even triple boot with Xp as well. (I have installation media and my product keys for XP and 7 though, so those are not really a problem.)
The computer came with no discs at all. There is a procedure to make recovery disks. I may do that, but I think those will be to restore the computer to how it came from the factory, and therefore not usable for a clean install.
I don't see my product key for Win 8 anywhere. Not on the computer, not on any kind of card that came with it, etc.
I looked at the tutorial here for clean install of Windows 8, but it requires an install disc and product key. I have neither, although I am a legal owner of Windows 8.
Is there a way I can create (from my installed Windows 8) a win 8 install disk, that can be used for a clean install? Or a link to download one? Is there a way I can get my product key?
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Oct 11, 2013
I just got three 320GB Seagate drives setup in RAID 0 for Linux, and I decided to also reinstall Windows 8 on my SSD since it started lagging and running slower than normal. While trying to install Windows 8, right after selecting a disk/partition to install to, I got a BSOD about an error in a nonpaged area or something. When I tried to boot into the installer again, I got a BSOD immediately after the logo splashscreen (too quick to see what it was about).
-I'm booting the Windows 8 installer from a Corsair Survivor 64GB USB3.0 flashdrive. I'm gonna try a dvd with a different iso that I downloaded more recently on my laptop.
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May 7, 2014
I built a computer about a year ago and its run fine until about a month ago when my displays started shutting off and not coming back on. The only way I could get my displays to come back on would be to disconnect both monitors and only plug in the monitor that connects with DVI. Connecting the second monitor would cause both to cut out and sometimes BSOD. It seems the same thing was happening with the on-board video. I finally decided to do a fresh Windows 8.1 install and see if the problem persisted. As soon as the I got up and running again I got a BSOD (before installing any drivers). I then did the following tests.
- Ran memtest for 2 passes (no errors)
- Tried my GPU on a different PCI-E slot (Still BSOD)
- Tried unplugging the power from the GPU (Still connected to the PCI-E slot, still BSOD)
I was thinking of trying with the video card out completely but it seems the crash is random and I can't reproduce it.
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Nov 17, 2013
I have MSI laptop GT70-20D all my drivers are updated to work with windows 8.1 from offical MSI site & I have my laptop running smooth once I leave it on for downloading my windows BSOD ...
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Oct 19, 2013
I am trying to activate the Hidden user account on Windows 8.1 but getting "System error 5 has occurred Access Denied"
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Jul 12, 2014
I recently upgraded to an SSD, installing a fresh copy of Win8Pro.
I'm receiving constant BSODs, typically reporting BAD_POOL_HEADER and IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
I've updated every driver I can think of (chipset, lan, usb, audio, video) as well as fully updating in windows update.
Memtest ran overnight finding no errors, and Western Digital's HDD utility reports no hard disk corruption.
I'm thinking either a bad driver, or some hardware failure that I can't nail down. My specs should be listed in my profile, with the addition of a 750w corsair PS and my HDD setup (AHCI, 1 crucial mx100 256gb SSD (primary), 1tb WD blue, and 1tb WD green as data drives).
Crash dumps should be attached, one may have driver verifier enabled.
Also, clean booting seems to be slightly more stable than a regular boot, so there's that.
Attempting to install windows 8.1 fails right at the end (after installing and setting up, reporting 0xC1900101 - 0x2003).
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Nov 16, 2012
A week ago I did a completely fresh install of Windows 8 64 bit and everything was working great. When I booted up my laptop on Wednesday I noticed it was running terribly slow. When I opened task manager I saw that disk usage was at 100% despite the combined total of data transfer being 0.8MB/s.
The problem occurs constantly if I set my laptop power mode to balanced but only occurs intermittently at high performance. I've run a chkdsk and everything is showing up fine and bizarrely there is no slowdown whatsoever on safe mode.
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Mar 11, 2014
I recently re installed Windows 8 then upgraded to Windows 8.1 because I was having BSOD. Now on the fresh install, which is 4 days or so old, my computer BSOD on start up like before.
My guess hardware failure or Norton....
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