To me it's not obvious at all that pre-activated data.dat was needed, for the following reason. A non-activated Pro (for example, one installed with default retail key) can be upgraded with the default retail ProWMC key. So activation is not a prerequisite to upgrading to WMC. For that matter, it's not obvious at all that activating the Pro will make the resulting already-upgraded ProWMC accept upgrade keys. So the tie between activation and accepting upgrade keys is fairly loose. At any rate, I think it's good to nail down even the small differences and understand them properly. No point, in my opinion. The slmgr /ckms command merely clears the domain name of the KMS server used for activation. It's not even clear that information is stored in data.dat, and not just in the registry. Even if it's in data.dat as well, it's not clear that issuing the command actually clears it from there (just like slmgr /upk only clears your product key from the registry, but not from data.dat). Lastly: if you used a private KMS server, you can give it any name you want, in which case the name of the KMS server is not very telling.
You always use a data.dat from a Pro+WMC. The route to get there is this: Install Pro. Activate. Upgrade to WMC. Grab data.dat. There is no need to activate the WMC after upgrade, and in fact you don't have to use your own free MS key for the upgrade to WMC to end up with a working data.dat. You can use the default retail ProWMC key (which can't be activated anyway).
I didn't get it activate it, it can't be activated. You can do: 1. Install Pro with default retail key. 2. Upgrade with default retail ProWMC key. The result is a non-activatable WMC that won't accept the free MS WMC upgrade keys. This path is only useful for one thing: to replace the data.dat on it to make it accept the WMC upgrade key.
Irrespective - if data.dat does not hav an activation routine... it's useless - but yup stay away from blocked keys.. I'd say
I don't understand what do u mean by that... I said the above post b'coz it worked for me like a charm and online activation was successful as well
No... I installed windows 8 pro on the m/c I wanted to use with win 8 ProWMC and then activated it via kms (local of course using vmvare) then use the free WMC upgrade key... on reboot just did an online activation... the results were +ve as expected... then used the data.dat file in "%Windir%\system32\spp\store"
guys I found something... the data.dat file can be from any version of windows 8 no matter accept that it should be activated
OK, but who knows that's *inside* your data.dat? Not that I'm worried myself, but some people want it to be ultra-clean (no traceable info etc).
ATM no-one can tell - seems quite encrypted/obfuscated - IMHO only an activation marker is read - not so much the manner of activation - but hey it's all theory...
I believe it holds the history of ur activation process... because the more u install keys the more its size increases... for ex. the dada.dat file from wim is 6k... one after kms activation is 11k(mine was)... after WMC key 21k... and when first time I added it to wim and had a reinstall and after activation it was 25k...