Interesting thread, thanks to all contributors. I wonder what would be the size of a data.dat just after legit upgrade from Win7 to Windows 8 Pro using a paid, personal key (the famous $14.99 or $39.99 offer), then activated online. It should eventually result in the "smallest" .dat file...
I don't dispute this - I could toggle between retail and kms activation merely by changing keys and the retail date remained the same as well as the KMS date - thus it definitely stored the date of activation as well.. Contrary to my previous post I must confess thinking about that now - the KMS data must have been stored as well otherwise I would not have been able to be KMS activated without going "on-line" again...
I activated my win8 pro with free media centre key, then syspre'ed, deleted all user accounts etc, imagex'ed the windows partition, and restored it. It booted into windows asked for a key - which i put in the media centre upgrade key, and has activated without the need to be connected to the net. So it appears that the data.dat file holds all the info from the previous activation, and if nothing has changed (hardware wise) is happy to reactivate without checking MS's servers. The data.dat file change in size once reactivating, was 20,768 bytes, but now is 20.688 bytes..
If someone is interessted I did a bigger scenario in VM. Multiple activations with same key, just different time with multiple captures of the tokens.dat and final data.dat
Well I always get 15kb and 14 kb after online activation every time. All are clean install on VM, 2 laptops 1 PC with free WMC keys on their own. People get different sizes of the file is because upgrade from existing Windows is it not? Or maybe it got to do with location and nearest M$ server for activation perhaps? Still I'm really curios and want to see what are stored inside this data.dat
first of all there is nothing like clean data.dat... still if u want this data.dat was created using a gvlk key available on TechNet site and activated pro using local kms server... View attachment data.zip
Thanks! With 'clean' i mean created with this procedure: So i have the most 'clean and generic' ProWMC iso, that accepts free wmc keys and activates. The data.dat file you posted is that one i'm speaking of?
this data.dat doesnot contain any prowmc key as it was never upgraded to to ProWMC... however it doesnot matter... it still is capable of accepting windows 8 ProWMC key
Are you sure? From what i tested and understand the data.dat have to upgrade to WMC but not need to activate. Doesn't windows 8 Pro and PRO WMC is different version? So how could an activated PRO data.dat(still PRO by the way) without WMC accept a Pro WMC key?
WMC key is not an activation key - it upgrades but an underlying activation is needed to provide the new edition's activation - that comes from data.dat...
Yes I'm aware of that. My post is related to few of the previous before that, not just one. What I mean is if you take the data.dat from activated 8 Pro(only) without upgrading and make a new ISO out of it expecting the installation will accept WMC key on CLEAN install it will not do. Referring to that another person asking as clean as he can get data.dat will result a 15kb size both using glvk. That's the data you want to grab and put inside the store folder to make a clean ISO for smooth installation.
I think most people are missing the obvious in the quest for a "clean data.dat". If we suspect that the SPP is capable of deriving your WMC "Non-Genuine Activation Chain" based on the original Pro Activation, is it not safe to conclude the omission of that data in the "clean data.dat" is a huge red flag to the SPP. It is also logical to assume sharing a "clean data.dat" legit retail activation could also become a Red Flag? Once again a reminder the SPP is not a Static Activation Platform. If the privacy settings allow for Automatic activation by default then the SPP will update itself automatically. SPP Description:
@hack please elaborate .. I'd like to see this thread be updated by author and some of it's contributors with their latest thoughts and progress on KMS activation and it's relation to the data.dat file .. This is certainly the heart of any developing issues that might occur with activation
A data.dat with only the wmc activation and no other previous activations is also suspicious, as there should have been a previous activation in order to install wmc. So a clean data.dat doesn't exist.
No, just saying that a wmc activation cannot exist without a previous pro activation. So cleaning the pro activation traces out of data.dat is just as suspicious as one with info from a blacklisted kms. A data.dat without previous activations can not exist. Also, tampering without breaking things is hard. Isn't it signed or something? But you never know... Maybe in the future there will be oems selling multimedia orientated pcs that come with wmc pre-installed. Although that is OA3.0 it could help in creating a wmc edition that doesn't require previous activation and isn't polluted with a pre-made kms data.dat.
at the end of the day if the free WMC gives me an adequate amount of time to test the OS I'm happy .. I hate paying for something I eventually don't like in the end