Yes, new motherboard, new CPU, new ram but my old HD booted up into Windows 8 and still shows that it is activated. This was not what I was expecting. Since I dual boot with Windows 7, I next tried booting into 7. No go. So then I tried the Windows 7 DVD to do a repair but it did not support my usb mouse and keyboard. Tried the Windows 8 DVD and mouse and keyboard working just fine. I guess the moral of the story is: new computer, new OS go together.
I simply don't believe, that you are still activated by inserting your hd into a totally different machine. How did you "activate" this W8 OS? If this works, I do it from now on every day ... lol, install 8 on any hd, activate a little bit and then move it to a new PC
>>> I simply don't believe, that you are still activated ...<<< I have done this several times with the KMS-activated RTM as well as Enterprise evaluation. I can't explain why this should work but it appears to. Installed on Intel system, moved HDD to AMD motherboard, then to a different Intel chipset, it worked every time. Now I must point out that it is not hundreds of times, more like 6-8 and I'm not actually spending hours using such a system, it's only for testing. It takes some time for Windows 8 to install the new drivers at start-up, but then it works and it says 'activated'. And it does not 're-activate' either because I always clear the KMS server name. So, how do you explain that ? I have no idea.
These are both Time Limited Licences, by design they are more forgiving on hardware changes (hardware weighting) To test this you must however establish an internet connection once you have moved the OS to new hardware. Windows 8 will report "Activated" despite hardware changes in some cases, and only update the activation status once it phones home if it is out of tolerance. Look @ the type of licencing model, Business licencing on a time limited licence has less Nag screens whereas retail licencing will nag the hell out of the consumer. Edit: On my Windows to Go machines MAK is totally useless as it almost always requires activation on new hardware. KMS on windows to go is a lot more lenient.
I have done similar. I moved an image that went to one machines HDD onto another machines HDD and activated it without issue, a couple ways. 1)Win8ProWMC: I put this on a machine that had Win8Core (HP OEM). I had to Enable legacy boot in the bios and after making a backup of the OEM drive (imaged entire GPT drive/all partitions) and made a basic MBR drive and dumped the image from the other drive onto it. Paragon adjusted the size difference and that was it. All I needed to do was enter a new WMC (Free) key, and it worked. I did this because I couldn't do a fresh install of Win8Pro retail. Every time I would try to install Pro Retail the install would already have taken the OEM key and install Win8 Core. I need to change the key in the firmware to fix that I think? 2)Win8ProVL: Same as above, it was an image from another system activated with KMS, I just had to reactivate. in both cases once I put the image on the new machine, it automatically detected and installed the devices on first boot. Of course in both cases, I entered a new key. Nothing kept activation thus far. I did do a WTG on an external drive that would always keep activation. Each new machine, it would boot, find and install new devices but always kept its Activation for 180 days (well it was counting down of course).
Sorry I'm late in answering your questions, but I was still working on getting my new computer up and running yesterday. I dumped Windows 7. I have 5 hard drives: 2 ea @ 3TB and 3 ea @ 2TB and did some restoring of music and photos from backup and that is still going on. But to answer previous questions, I used the key that ends in J8CK4 and did a KMS activation. I just checked again it is showing that my 180 day activation is good until 4/14/13. I did purchase the $14.99 upgrade for 3 of my computers and eventually I will use it to do a permanent activation but I'm thinking now that I'll want to do a clean install because the hardware from the old computer left a lot of residue that I don't need or want. Yes, I know I will need to register with my upgrade key before the end of January.
This is great information!!! As a system admin, I'm sure others in my boat have had those issues: A critical piece of hardware fails and now you must move the OS to different hardware HAL's and drivers force you to do many steps or else Windows won't boot To see these types of issues "go away" will make my job much easier as fixing these things are time consuming. Being activated after the fact is a nice touch as you usually would have to call Microsoft to reactivate if the server was built on an OEM or Retail license using the older methods
I mentioned this same thing in another thread a few weeks ago. I have an ssd drive that was installed in my desktop pc Win8 activated with kms. I took this same ssd drive and put it in my laptop. Booted the laptop up and the system remained activated.