Forgive me if this has been covered a thousand times! I could not find a specific answer although may have been looking in the wrong places..! 1) New self built pc with ssd for OS - specs all fine for Win 8.1 2) NO OEM OS ever installed previously so no key in BIOS 3) Perfectly legal purchase of full Win 8.1 Pro DVD OEM with COA sticker etc I am a stranger to fresh install of this version of windows so excuse my naivety! It will not activate - Key Blocked Now, from seemingly endless searches with a raft of information and yet nothing to explain exactly how to install. Apart from, that is, much tl;dr on microsoft.com oem partner blah blah regarding pre-install using ADK etc. Do I really need to do all that just to install an os with no support etc? I'm tempted to just whack ubuntu on it and have done with it - write off the £103 I thought I saw generic OEM installation keys somewhere on MS site but can now not find them... Any guidance would be greatly appreciated! One last point for now - the mobo is an MSI 970A-G43 AMD 970 ATX Motherboard (PCI-E, Socket AM3+) UEFI BIOS Do I need to enable the "Windows 8" features in bios to allow burning in of the key?
if it is perfectly legal, call MS. The key shouldn't be blocked unless you bought it from Ebay or other crap site, then lesson learned on that. But if not, call MS, its your key why not be able to use it if that is the case. Anyway, once you get the key sorted, boot to the media, install it enter key connect online and activated. Very simple with a working perfectly legal key. Key does not require burnt in to work, only entered during install or after install. Make sure you are not mistaking for example 0 for O etc too. That definitely wont work
Go into the bios, turn ON Windows 8 features, put your install DVD into your optical drive then save & exit. The media should now install in UEFI mode. When asked for key, just put yours in. As EFA11 has said, perhaps your getting a 0 instead of O or B instead of 8. If it's not accepting your genuine key, call MS. The generic OEM key is used when you have a PC that shipped with the product key in the bios (OA3)...
Thank you @EFA11 and @Flipp3r for your quick responses and advice... In answer to the legitimacy issue - purchased from amazon uk (Prime) - all packaging, COA sticker, seal, hologram - intact and as genuine as one can tell! Thank you iro char accuracy checking: B/8 0/O/o etc. It's like hearing myself advising others, lol! Yes, accurately entered... I am rather active in other quarters so use non-M$ OS's - and tbh continue to use XP Pro on some machines and have had a Win 8.1 Ent Eval version going for 2 x rearms and 1 re-install so nearly a year on that... hence my 'fuzzyness' around this version install! Ok - so, not in front of the subject PC but 'Windows 8 Features' > 'Enable' has further options... Using RW_Everything, ACPI table has NO MSDN tab/entries which is what one would expect for a 'virgin' mobo... Am I right to assume that on successful activation - the product key will get written to UEFI BIOS? (EDIT) Oh, and in case wondering, used RW_Everything on initial 'un activateable' install attempt! Once again, many thanks for assistance so far!
As stated earlier on your key does not get written to bios that is only for machines that come with windows 8 pre-installed i,e, Dell, HP, ASUS, ACER, e.c.t.
Thanks @urie I get it now and wow, @Flipp3r - That's an interesting read and explanation around the MSDN process etc! So, in short, I should be able to 1) Enable Windows 8 Features in BIOS 2) Boot, install & activate from the DVD 3) All using the one product key on the COA sticker It currently takes the key in 3)^^^ to install, formats target drive, and installs. It is at activation time it fails. I cannot truly believe that this is a bent distribution. Does the above installation method comply with the 'pre-installation' requirements of the OEM license? As of course, I am a system builder building this system for someone who will have the OOBE! Is all the MS OEM Partner info and reference to the ADK and Win PE etc. just obfuscation?
So basically - I'm screwed installing this without huge effort..! (EDIT 1) Might a as well go back to my 8.1 Ent Eval re-install... at least I know I have 180 days before installing again - and it's painless! (EDIT 2) For how long will it operate without activation prior to auto 1 hour shutdowns etc? I wished to use, and purchased, what I thought was a genuine legal product and as usual, Micro$oft in their infinite wisdom of treating everyone as criminals and software pirates have yet again pushed a customer (with a small 'c') even further away from their bloatware... Now, where's my Ubuntu disk..?