Upgrade from Windows. Worryingly it isnt activated and I didn't save my RT key. Might have to recover back to 8.0 and back it up
I am a little curious, if you do it that way does it overwrite your recovery partition to update it to 8.1?
clarification on dism with boot.wim Index:1 and Index:2 I mounted boot.wim with Index:1, injected drivers and committed. Then mounted boot.wim again as Index:2, injected drivers and committed. Guess I can mount it with both Index:1 and Index:2 instead? would it make a difference?
I did exactly that, I mounted boot.wim with index 1 on one folder, and boot.wim with index 2 on another folder. It makes no difference at all, as it is applying the changes to separate partitions inside the WIM.
Thanks for information! I ended up going out and buying retail version Windows 8 PRO ($199) and it worked... I do not understand why my OEM key was not working (it said that I could not activate this version with this key). I did not want to bother anymore with finding random keys on web and having other problems and time wasted. After successful activating with PRO, I tried my existing Media Center PRO Pack and didn't work! I then remembered I signed up for free Media Center Upgrade promotion that Microsoft had at the beginning of 2013 and used that key, and it worked (very surprisingly!). However after restart, it said that key did not work! I re entered the Media Center PRO pack key from earlier I purchased, and it worked. Talk about confusing waste of time crap. All I hope is when 8.1 is released official, updates will be accepted by RTM successfully...
Where is "Microsoft.Surface.RT.Windows.RT.8.1_OEM.drivers"? It is zip format but cann't get mag or download info. Sorry I found in iso.
To answer my own question, it appears that if you upgrade from setup.exe inside Windows, the recovery partition does get modified. I haven't actually done a system recovery to know for sure that it brings you back to 8.1, but it changes the structure of the partition. In 8.0, there's a few files to set up partitions and then an image (but not a WIM). In 8.1 after using this method, there's now a WIM and a drivers folder.
If you saved your 8.0 recovery on a USB, wouldn't you be able to recover via that method? EDIT: Doing it now, will report back if successful (I hope it is because I didn't save my product key)
Yes, that will work, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. In that case, the 8.0 recovery image is still there externally, on your USB drive, so it works fine. I did the same earlier myself.