Help Recovering Win8 Pro key?
Edited to shorten:
I have a Dell laptop with a Windows 8 Pro stickerm. Dead hard drive, so I put in a replacement drive.
I thought I could install 8 and then activate, but the USB installer created with the official Windows media creation tool demands a key before it begins installing.
Everything I find online says it's in the "MSDM" table in the BIOS, but with RW-Everything there's no MSDM section, and with get_win8key it get the error "ACPI table MSDM not found on this system". I do see a SLIC section with RW-Everything but I can't tell what the data means.
The replacement hard drive was used and has Win 8 home or basic, so I do have that key now, but I need Pro back for the admin tools that the basic version blocks.
Can someone please help me?
Update:
Got a "WN09" key from the SLIC table with SLIC toolkit, but when I tried to upgrade using the "add features" option in the activation control panel, it tells me it "can't use that key". Info from SLIC Toolkit is as follows:
- XSDT, RSDT, Pubkey and Marker all are "DELL WN09".
- Version: Windows 8 6.2 9200 (x64)
- PKey: Read OK! (PMFXB-WWXCW-4X83J-XFHHP-*****)
- Cert: No OEM Certificate found (Run as Administrator) <--(I did run as admin)
- SLIC Dump, Status: Dump OK! (DELLWN09_V2.1)
- No OEM SLP String found
- ACPI tab shows a mark under RSDT #11, SLIC Dell WN09, Software Licensing Desc. Table
- Same for XSDT section
I thought maybe there was a version mismatch, so I checked the key with ShowKeyPlus and it says it's invalid! But it came directly from the SLIC table!
Why is there no MSDM table for Windows 8? Maybe Dell just decided to use SLIC? Okay, then why is they key in the SLIC table invalid? According to this link, the 8.1 installer should recognize 8.0 keys:
http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/75642-where-get-windows-8-0-iso.html I can prove I own the laptop or prove the Pro sticker is there, but this is ridiculous. I don't want to consider piracy just to get what I own!
submitted by
Hexadecimus to
techsupport
I've created the ultimate bootable USB disk...
So, I have created a bootable USB Windows 8.1 drive that is also dual-booted with Ubuntu 13.10.
So, what sort of programs should I put on it? I'm a bit limited by space (30GB for each OS, 64GB USB stick), so they can't be too big.
If anyone wants to know how I did this, here's a guide. I recommend at least 60GB of space:
- Follow this guide to create a bootable Windows 8 To-Go drive. This basically installs a portable version of Windows to USB. This will work with Windows 8.1 ISO's. Get them here. You'll need a torrenting app. See bottom of post for info about which one to choose.
- Don't worry about setting up Windows just yet. Boot the Ubuntu installation media. I recommend 32-bit Ubuntu for the reasons described at the bottom of this post.
- Click "Try Ubuntu". Type "Gparted" into the dash. Switch to the Windows USB you just created.
- Switch gparted to the Windows USB you created, and shrink the Windows partition down to half the drive. In the empty space, create an EXT4 partition, except leave 5GB after it. In the remaining 5GB, create a Linux Swap partition. Apply changes.
- Run the Ubuntu installer. Check the two boxes on the second screen. On the third screen, click "Something Else".
- Scroll down to the Windows USB. It should have 1 NTFS partition, 1 EXT4 partition, and one swap partition. Right-click the EXT4 partition, select EXT4 from the dropdown, and select "/" for the second dropdown. Check the "Format" box. Click "Go Back" if a dialog box pops up.
- IMPORTANT: In the dropdown at the bottom, select your USB drive as the bootloader location. It is the same /dev/sdX that you created partitions on. Make sure to select the one with just /dev/sdX and not /dev/sdX1 or any other number. If you select the wrong one, you may accidentally select your computer's HDD and make the system unbootable.
- Go through the installation like normal. Reboot the computer, and boot from USB if you want to do anything on it. Select Windows 8 from the boot menu if you want to use it. You'll have to set it up, so just follow the prompts. It will reboot once. Make sure to boot from USB and select Windows 8 on the boot menu again.
- You now have a dual-boot USB drive. Do whatever you like.
WHICH WINDOWS 8.1 ISO TO SELECT: You'll need the Enterprise English ISO. I recommend choosing the x86 version and not the x64 version so that the bootable USB works on both 32-bit and 64-bit computers. If you're only going to be using this with 64-bit computers, you can choose the x64 version. To activate it, do the following:
- Download the latest version of Microsoft Toolkit and run it on the USB Windows install.
- Click the little Windows icon at the bottom, go to the Activation tab, and click E-Z Activator.
- Wait for it to finish. Done.
submitted by
Degru to
computers
