Easily Activate Fresh Install Of 8.1 On Windows 8.0 System?
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.
-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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
The program allows you to activate the ReFS (Resilient File System) in Windows 8. Supported versions of Windows 8 are RTM (build 9200), Release Preview (build 8400), Consumer Preview (build 8250), both 32- and 64-bits.
You are using this software at your own risk, we do not take responsibility for any damages to your system, but we do not believe it can harm anyone anyway. If you want to be able to remove the ReFS, before its activation, create a restore point.
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.
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.
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 ...
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
In the image :Why is that? how to solve it ,the store doesn't work? It disappears with fresh install! Does taking ownership of some system files result in store failure?
For the past couple of months, I have been noticing unexpected freezes on Windows 8. Since I have access to MSDN, I decided to do a fresh install of Windows 8.1 to see if it solves my problem.
Now, when it freezes, it actually shows me some useful information. BSOD is labled as BAD_POOL_HEADER and I have grabbed the 2 dump files and other info in the zip file attached to this post.
Memtest and Chkdsk show no problems after running both. Memtest did about 6 passes last night without any errors so I know for sure it's not a problem with my RAM. Chkdsk showed no errors after running it in my 8.1 bootable USB so my SSD is fine. I also have the latest Kingston SSD firmware. NVIDIA Graphics card drivers are also updated to support Windows 8.1. Still not sure what's causing it.
In Windows Event Viewer I'm getting this error: Windows can not easily be started with the error status 0xC00000D4. The problem is that fast startup that is included in windows 8 doesn't work (that's why I get this error) but I can't seem to solve it. My motherboard is Asus P8Z77-V LX
So I'm using a late 2012 iMAC running bootcamp with Win 8 64 bit system builder version. I just installed the OS hours ago and have already run into BSOD problems, I was directed to these forums and post before I try to do anything else and cause more issues. Every time my computer powers back up from going to sleep it crashes and gives me a system error for memory exception and shows the file name igdkmd64.sys. Like I said before long time apple user that started using windows again.
Issue solved as of Intel HD Graphics Driver 10.18.10.3345
I get a BSOD with message DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (igdkmd64.sys) shortly after launching any game. The driver is linked to Intel's Integrated Graphics which I have updated with 'Windows 8.1 Ready' drivers. My laptop has a Nvidia dedicated GPU which is what I set games to run with, so I'm not sure why Intel's drivers are failing since using a fresh 8.1 install I have been receiving low memory error messages whilst playing games despite having 16GB of RAM.
I recently installed Windows 8.1 Pro x64 and the correct up to date drivers for my hardware. I experience a BSOD, it doesn't go into the BSOD right away but after 15-30 minutes of use I get the BSOD with the "page fault in nonpaged area" message.
I have attached my debugfiles and hope that someone much brighter than me in deciphering these files can lend me a hand at fixing this issue.
Found out it was my new Panda Cloud Free Antivirus. I deleted the POS and installed something else, now no more BSODs.
What I need to know is that: Is that possible to integrate a loader onto Windows 8 boot loader to reset the activation to trial period and then activate the system with an offline key (activate as offline only)?
This way we could make somekind of loader to set activation status as OK as far as online is not intented. And we can continue to have an trial adventure for life with Windows 8. Is that possible or no one tried it yet?
One more question, does the dev who made that topic has the tool for his method so we can try it on any win8 machine? If so, download link?
My system currently has a blue screen around twice a day from what seems like a driver issue. I have tried driver verifier, swapped out the GPU since I thought most things pointed to that and did a fresh install. The only thing I have left to do is update my motherboard bios. I am questioning if the GPU was even the issue since I still got a crash... Below is the guide to Driver Verifier I used so you can see what steps I took. I am at my wits end and am not to great at pointing out what driver crashed or whats left to do after the OS install.
Driver Verifier-- tracking down a mis-behaving driver.
So I was getting bsods before and had my HDD wiped. when attempting to install windows 8 I get a bsod. Not sure which as it is too quick to read. I have flashed the bios to the most recent version. But it still bsods. I tried using a known, good working HDD with windows installed and it still caused a bsod.
Just got in the mail 2 ssd's and the HD7870 video card along with a copy of windows 8.1 complete (retail). My boot ssd (one I'm trying to install on) is a 60gb Mushkin and the other is the one I was going to put games on the 240gb Mushkin.
So I hooked the 60gb one up and put in my install disk for the 64bit of windows 8.1. It went through the install fine, then it said it needed to restart to complete and when it restarted it gave me the black screen of death. It sat there for over 30 minutes then the screen turned to a yellowish orange.
So I formatted the ssd, reinstalled fresh again. Same thing.
I then tried the 240gb thinking maybe I had a bad ssd. Same thing.
Then I tried an old 500gb Seagate that I knew worked but I formatted it and installed. Same thing.
So back to the 60gb I went, formatted, reinstalled 8.1 then it did the black screen again. So I tried booting over a couple times till it gave me the option to start in safe mode with networking. It started in a black screen with the blue windows logo... and stayed there for an hour.
I then tried the command prompt methods of BOOTREC/FIXMBR, BOOTREC/FIXBOOT, BOOTREC/REBUILDBCD and restarted with same black screen. *after the rebuildbcd, it said copies of windows = 0???*
So I tried to start using the install CD as a recovery drive, it brought up the option to install windows....
I'm not sure how I can get dumps or test stuff if there is no way for me to even get to the actual explorer other than the black screen or the black screen with the blue window logo, or even he more rare black screen with underscore blinking...
Just reinstalled windows 8 on my desktop and started to receive random bsod. I know windows 8.1 is out. I downgraded due to BSOD issues on that version also. Yes I also know my windows 8 is out dated. I understand I should update but that's the least of my concerns right now. I already had 1 ram card fail on me a couple months back. But I didn't recognize this blue screen error.
I was reading this guys post BSOD Critical Process Died even after complete reinstall and his issue is exactly like I am having. My computer would just completely freeze while playing games or watching videos online.
I Just tried to run Memtest86+ and something strange happened. So here's what I did. First I download the Memtest86+ USB Installer. Turned off my computer and put my other 2 rams cards back in (I was testing one at a time). Started up my computer (HP) and press ESC to go into the boot menu and the computer just froze on that screen. It wouldn't do anything. So I turned the computer off and tried another option F10 I think it was. The computer froze again. I repeated this process for all boot options on my PC and each time the computer froze on the startup screen.
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.
I have a fresh install of Windows 8.1. Everything has been brought up to date including all hardware drivers and bios. I continue to experience the same BSOD every couple of days or so (Attached in this post). This is what else ive tried: Ive unplugged all extra hardware and it still continues to happen. Ive installed a different drive, tested memory (memtest) for 24 hours. Checked the power supply. Ran PC check on the mobo. etc. still continues to happen.
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
The problem seems to be caused by the following file: ntoskrnl.exe
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen,restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:
Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed.If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any Windows updates you might need.
If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.If you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.
