After replacing the data.dat file in windows 8.1, is it the hardware id generated by windows 8.1 and windows 8 are same?
Actually, the answer is Yes. A more elaborate answer for the OP: On identical hardware, using the same product key, windows 8 and windows 8.1 generate identical Installation IDs. If you try to phone activate, you get identical Confirmation IDs as a result. The generation of the Installation ID is independent of what data.dat you use or insert, so the original question is slightly confused. data.dat does not contain the Installation ID and is not involved in its generation.
I doubt this one. Assume, all the Laptops of certain series will have identical Hardware. Now does that mean I can buy license for one and activate all others? It's interesting one, even I don't know.
This is right. Also what actually is an hardware ID in this regard? We know installation and confirmation IDs, machine Guid, UUID, hardware IDs for hardware devices, MAC addresses for NIC... Literary a hardware id cannot change if no hardware is changed...what can change is the way windows hashes the hardware IDs to create an installation ID and that has not changed.
Practically not even there (need to be modified manually) since the vm creates some random IDs at each install (probably time stamp related). Each vm ware install is different somewhere although once OA3.0 activated it activates on every vm (ware). This at least applies to w8. The transferred (hashed) IDs cannot make the 'difference'.
sorry for the confusion guys,what i actually mean is that,i've activated my windows 8 using the promotional WMC key and phone activation method,so my question is that,can i use the phone activation id received from Ms to activate win8.1 rtm version using the origial key(promotional WMC) i used for 8 activation?
Hello experts, So just to clear some doubts if one is on a win 8 pro/pro with wmc retail phone activated machine now ,would the ids generated be the same for win 8.1 pro/pro with wmc so that one can activate using the same activation codes as in win 8. Of course the hardware is same(8 to 8.1 on the same machine). And what about the installed Office 2013, wouldn't installing office on 8.1 generate different activation ids,as the activation of office is now tagged along with that of windows in SPP. Any advice/suggestions. Thanks
The answer to both of these questions is YES. I have extensively tested and verified this using VirtualBox VMs. Specifically: * Installation ID generated by Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro is identical on identical hardware, provided that you use the same product key. * Installation ID generated by Windows 8 Pro WMC and Windows 8.1 Pro WMC is identical on identical hardware, provided that you use the same product key for WMC. It doesn't matter if Windows is 32-bit or 64-bit, they generate the same Installation ID. If the Installation ID is the same, then the same Confirmation ID can be used to activate the machine. I also did the following experiment: Given a VirtualBox VM, I created a second VM with identical hardware configuration. Naturally, this doesn't mean that all the serial numbers of the hardware components are the same (uuid, MAC etc.), since VirtualBox randomly generates those on a new VM. Initially the Installation ID was different between these two VMs. I then altered the following values on the second VM and made sure they are identical to the first VM: * Hardware UUID (or as VirtualBox calls it, "Machine UUID") * HardDisk UUID (there is only one hard disk in the VM) * MAC address After this change, the Installation ID became the same between the two VMs. Note that the HardDisk UUID is not something that the guest operating system can actually see, however VirtualBox generates the harddisk serial number (which the guest can see) from it using a fixed algorithm. You can check what values the operating system can see with these commands: * Hardware UUID Code: wmic csproduct get uuid * HardDisk serial number (derived from the UUID) Code: wmic diskdrive get serialnumber * MAC address Code: wmic nic get macaddress I should add that there is one difficulty you will run into with Windows 8.1 Pro WMC. The issue is getting Windows to accept your WMC upgrade key in the first place. There are plenty of other threads discussing this so I won't go into details. However, once you did manage to enter your WMC upgrade key, everything above applies to the Installation ID.
As I was changing from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 in last week, I still had the ID (the computer ID) from my Laptop in an text file which I printed out for to have it if I need to call to MS again for activation. After the 8.1 installation was done, I activated normally, but had problem after adding the WMC to it, which I couldn't activate directly, had to call to MS. Now the ID I was getting for to show to ms, was different in 8.1 as in the earlier 8! That's why I wrote as answer: NO! Unfortunately I had put the print out in rubbish and it's gone. But sometimes the next days, I'll update the computer of my son and the same will happen again! Let see the ID will differs again on desktop or not.
Let's clear up the terminology a little bit, since people throw around things like "hardware id", "hardware hash" etc. without it being clearly defined what they mean. In Windows terminology, there is an Installation ID and a Confirmation ID. The Installation ID is a single long number generated by Windows, and is derived from a combination of a variety of components in the system. It is affected by various serial numbers/IDs of hardware components in the system, the product key that was entered, the number of processors, the bit version of Windows (32-bit or 64-bit) and so on. You can check the Installation ID with "slmgr /dlv", and it's also used during the phone activation process. The Confirmation ID is what Microsoft returns to you during the phone activation process, and is what you enter to activate your system. It's unique to the Installation ID. As the Installation ID is derived (in part) from a variety of hardware components in the system, probably using a hashing algorithm, people often refer to a system as having a unique "hardware id" or "hardware hash". What they mean by this is that each system has a unique hardware make-up, and changing things such as the serial number of the harddisk alters this make-up. As a result, the "hardware id" or "hardware hash" would change, and so does the Installation ID. Not to be confused with the above is something called the Hardware UUID. This is a special, unique serial number embedded in the BIOS or EFI of the system (more specifically in the DMI/SMBIOS), and is supposed to be unique to every system in the world. It was specifically designed and introduced to give something unique to identify each system. The OS (such as Windows) can query this value and make use of it however it wishes. In case of Windows, the Installation ID depends on the Hardware UUID, so if the Hardware UUID changes, so does the Installation ID. It is possible to alter the Hardware UUID of a physical system using various BIOS modding tools. It is trivially possible to alter the Hardware UUID of a Virtual Machine, both VMWare and VirtualBox provide mechanisms for this.
That doesn't prove anything, all that it proves is that some factor that affects the Installation ID has changed. Maybe the hard disk was changed or you installed a different bit version (32-bit vs 64-bit), maybe you mixed up your WMC keys and you used a different one, or perhaps something else. The fact that your WMC didn't activate online is an evidence of this. You have to be absolutely sure to perform a clean experiment if you want to check this. For example, install Windows 8 Pro or WMC, and immediately without altering anything clean install Windows 8.1 Pro or WMC.
Thanks for this. Very interesting. Some details I didn't know yet. So these are the results for retail channel? Any info / differences about other (DM) channels?
@kelorgo Thanks for the prompt reply. Some more details please,would this apply to office 2013 also(no change being in 8.1 environment). And regarding 8.1 pro with wmc ,what about using the retail pro with wmc mak keys?,not upgrade keys. Or is it the case that any key for pro with wmc is in essence an upgrade key? Would this work? Install pro 8.1 with generic retail key, upgrade it to 8.1 pro with wmc with generic pro wmc key, remove keys after upgrade, install your win 8 pro with wmc retail mak key (from activated win 8 pro with wmc) ,--should generate the same ids, use old act codes to activate. What do you think? Thanks
Sorry I should have made that clear, yes this was the case for retail key for Pro and retail upgrade key for WMC. I don't have access to any machine with an MSDM table, nor do I know any OEM: DM keys, so I don't know what the situation is there.
I am afraid I don't know, as I don't have or use Office 2013. I never looked into any activation topics regarding it. Interesting, I didn't know that MAK keys exist for the "Pro with WMC" pack. You may run into a problem here: from what I read in other threads, Windows 8.1 is not accepting MAK keys for Windows 8. Provided that Windows 8.1 does actually accept the MAK key, my guess is that yes this will work.