Setup Installation :: Generic Install Key Being Detected As OEM Key?

I'm trying to get back up and running. It's a Toshiba laptop that came with Windows 8 with it, obviously UEFI and an embedded key.The person that was using it said it started to act up a week before it fully crashed. Afterwards, it wouldn't boot up, it would either BSOD with an error code I found pertaining to a graphics driver error, or stay on a blue screen with nothing on it and then restart and go through an endless Automatic Repair loop with no success. I check the logs and Windows checked EVERYTHING but couldn't find the issue why it wasn't booting. Did chkdsk, bootrec repair, offline sfc scan, STD scan, tried refresh/reset but the drive was apparently locked, couldn't do a system restore as there weren't any restore points, tried doing startup repair four times; nothing worked.

So I decided it would have to be wiped and reinstalled with 8.1. Thought it would be an easy process. I used the vbs script to show the OEM key to activate Windows once I was up and running with 8.1. OK, but for some reason the key looked familiar. Keyed in the key, it didn't work. So I wiped that hard drive with Windows 8.0, ran the vbs script, SAME key of Windows 8 Pro as before. Odd. I already tried converting the 8.1 Core OEM I previously installed to 8.1 Pro and tried that key, still nothing.

Then I checked the key on the interwebs, XKY4K-2NRWR-8F6P2-448RF-CRYQH, the reason why it looked so familiar is because it's a generic install key for Windows 8/8.1! This isn't the OEM key at all!

I deploy Windows with a custom 8.1 .wim image and have used this several times already and I THINK I might have that key used originally to install Windows into my virtual machine I have going for it. My thinking was that I might have used sysprep one too many times, but that doesn't explain why even with the plain Windows 8 AND 8.1 Core images why the key that's being detected is a generic install key.