My laptop came with Windows 7 Home Premium x64 and I upgraded it to Windows 8 Pro x64, activating with Microsoft Toolkit (VL). I upgraded recently (YESTERDAY!) to 8.1 Pro Retail and activated it with a key from somewhere. It worked for a day but I think the key is now blacklisted, so I went to try another key. Unfortunately, my sppsvc is disabled and I can't re-enable it. Should I clean install? I'm due for one anyway... and if I do, what's the best way to activate? (even if it involves installing 8 then upgrading to 8.1) Edit: since Server 2012 (maybe R2 as well?) can use Windows Loader, do you think I should just use that and convert it into a workstation?
hi, i'm not sure that ur key is blacklisted. i guess u have some troubles with spp service. open regedit and browse to: HKLM/system/currentcontrolset/services/sppsvc and try to set START value to 2. good luck.
Sounds like a malware infection or you modified the system somehow. Running "sfc /scannow" might help.
Same thing happened to me, I figured it out. Bootstrap's suggestion is what I had to do to get it activated again.