i followed the tutorial for win8 pro with wmc and successfully downgraded to win8 pro. besides a few hiccups, everything is working fine thanks for your help
It is not wise to tie the activation to the driver version. I don't think that Microsoft did not realize that the drivers are updated frequently. They themselves periodically offer to install a new version of the video driver through Windows Update. Activation must be tied to the hardware ID, isn't it? I remember the Win XP days when I periodically updated video drivers and graphic card activation vote didn't lost. - if you format and re-install, the VolSN is changed, you also lose 4 votes, and lose activation. Even if you reformat you can restore VolSN with VOLUMEID.exe easily. Code: usage: volumeid.exe [drive:] [Id]
Yup, MS considers that hardware and drivers are constantly updated or upgraded, the device hashes will be reset every 120 days after activation, and the new hash records gets back 10 votes; also if a vote is lost, it doesn't matter how many times you change the device, it's still 1 vote lost. An interesting thing is that I didn't found any reference to UUID, up until win7, I don't know for win8/8.1. I had mentioned about the MS tool VolID last year, it went un-noticed.....not my problem.
I've installed the GA rollup from abbodi's files. The build number listed in dism is the same. So, it's not like RTM v2 or anything, even though they did change a lot. Edit: PPL are reporting a kernel change, but not everything has the same build number. It's kind-of like how the rtm still has some of the same file versions from the preview
Yup, ownloaded it, but on 2nd thought, I'd rather wait for it to appear on WUD, just a few days. LOL.