I have a small secret about the dat files that I made the win8.1 WMC and the 17031 WMC ISO's ..... they were actually the dat files from win8.1Preview, activated with the preview key. Don't know about the other guys, but these dat files served well for those people who installed with my ISO's. LOL.
Let me chime in on this since I contacted Yen about this issue from way back then. As we all know, OA3.0 requires the SLA to be injected into the EFI BIOS and it is activated against MS servers during the injection (at factory) and out of the box (during setup by end-user). The SLA key is unique to the system and is specific to a particular SKU. When I replace the motherboard, I need to update the following with the DMI tools on the following (tattooing): - Model number/SKU number - Serial number - UUID - Type 1 and Type 11 on SMBIOS If any 1 of the 4 is missing or incorrect, the OEM injection server will refuse SLP injection. Some OEM only needs serial #, UUID and Type 11 together and could be injected successfully. With this process in mind, it is NOT possible to have 2 boards tattooed with the same SLP key because of uniqueness of UUID. I assume when the new UUID is registered with MS, the old one is cancelled. As long as Windows is activated by the end-user, my experience is that changing major components will not trigger reactivation. Windows 8 will show "configuring devices" during boot and that will be it. I believe OEM activation has the most flexibility in terms of hardware changes because it will not trigger an activation as long as the motherboard has the same SLP key. I suspect if we extract the product key after Windows 8 is working, we can use that key to install the same edition of Windows 8 manually on the same machine (via disc/download, different languages) without triggering re-activation by phone. I have not done this so if someone could chime in would be great.
The company I work for also build computers with SLP injected on standard retail Asus motherboards. During Windows 7 era, there is a COA and Windows 7 discs on each machine for reinstall. Now, with Windows 8, the COA and disc are gone and recovery partitions are the only thing that comes with it. During a discussion with the OEM builders at the office, I asked about process of replacement. For motherboards, the OEM builders can pre-inject the SLP key then send to me for replacement. I then use the recovery discs to re-image the HDD. Or for immediate jobs, the OEM builders can search the product key for that particular serial #, and I will have to re-install Windows 8 manually and activate it afterwards manually.