I've activated my windows 8.1 last year via skype activation. And yesterday I bought a new laptop.. I transfered my old hdd to my new laptop and Windows 8.1 deactivated. Thank you!
Hardware changes normally trigger deactivation. You'll need to activate same way again ... Phone/skype route. Will be no problem with a legit key (In case any leaked key was used, this will be most probably blacklisted already).
if u brought a new new laptop it should come with a legit key . assuming your using the same version of windows as the key activate using youur new key.
I did this last year with Windows 8 w/WMC on a 256GB SSD. Both W8 and WMC keys are legit. Drive was in a Dell XPS 8300 desktop. Put the drive in a new XPS 8700 desktop. Didn't use Skype, did the "activate by phone" thing. When asked "how many machines this copy of windows would be used on" - answer "one". Had to do the procedure twice, first for OS, then repeat for WMC. Again, both keys legit. And when the time came, no problem upgrading to W8.1. I realize the OP is starting from 8.1, not 8, just sharing my experience and feel if the keys are legit, this approach could well work too.
Same thing happened to me and when I had to answer "how many machines this copy of windows would be used on" I stupidly answered 2. Activation failed and I had to speak to a real person. Fortunately I got the activation, but when I asked the assistant if I can repeat the process in the future and if I could just use my legit key to activate "normally online", he wasn't sure what to answer. I was gonna create a new thread to ask about this but I'm glad someone opened a similar one. Can anyone answer me this? Thank you.
If you repeat the process, I'm pretty sure you can't activate "normally online". As I understand it, every computer has a "UUID" - universal, unique ID. When Windows detects a different machine, activation is lost. Hopefully, other members can verify this or tell me I am full of it.
OK, the funny thing is I purchased the Retail version of Windows 8 Pro because I read I could transfer the license from one machine to the other, as long as it is only used in only one PC and active it just fine.
Just type "slui 4" and run the phone activation. If it fails on your new system, talk to the CSR and explain how you want it to run on the new machine.
OK, thank you for the reply. One more question, backing up the activation files and restoring them for new installs, does it work well?
Backing up works always, but restoring does only work for phone activations. Online activations cannot be restored ATM.