With personal activation tokens it's not that hard to create your own ProWMC install media (apparently this shouldn't be shared) .
If this is not already said you probably have to reinstall windows 8 but you don't have to reformat at all lol. As far as I know there is no way to go back to 8.0 once you are on 8.1 without a reinstall.
I suspect the CCleaner registry cleanup did something funny, why not check up registry and see if the keys (edition and product key) are in order?
no, I always did clean installations with this win 8 upgrade key. I never EVER upgrade an OS. Clean install FTW
a bit too late, i've restored back to an image before installing any software/drivers and now the activation is back ok. won't use SetupBox anymore to download any ISO
have u try reinstalling your driver? and then how about your activation? AFAIK, different driver will make Differen Hash for activation.
I usually install Windows, activate it, install all Windows updates, set my libraries/sharing folders, then activate, never had a problem with activation before are you suggesting to always install drivers before activating? I know Office 2010 had an issue, where if you install and activate it before installing the drivers, it would tell you it is not activated after you install the drivers but that was fixed in Office 2013 and is no longer the case but maybe that could also be a reason for my de-activation. let me see now I am monitoring. let's see if the activation stays or goes away again
I also have the same problem with prowmc activation on my computer. I lost my activation, while disabling Lan Card or replace driver SATA/IDE with a different type.
This is quite normal , after you add key for get Windoes Media Center you will lose the activation of the os the solution is reactivate with Phone by typing slui 4 in cmd and get id confirmation or delete fake key by typing slmgr /upk & slmgr.vbs /cpky after enter your retail key slmgr /ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-...
Yes... it's been mentioned a few times... I forget who all brought up the 10point scale thing. Perhaps it was faikee or kelorgo... Doesn't matter. Anyway certain things take off a point and if you miss more than 3 points your activation goes away. MAC addresses are worth 3 points so if you have to change more than just a network card, you'd lose activation. LAN card + re-install might also cause a loss if there's a different installation ID. I believe that each install generates a unique ID, but I'm not sure if the activation counts that or just uses the hard drive serial. Just remember to make new backups after letting the system regenerate your files if you update something so you don't run into the threshold for some other minor thing.
That was me, anyway, ian's scenario was different, he has a legit win8 and WMC key all paid by hard cash, so everything in his OS is legit and activation is no problem(like he got activated after re-install). He lost activation, and windows reported his key as the generic key(instead of his WMC key), it won't accept his WMC key(the non-core error), so it's likely the registry or whatever was messed up.
is this the first change you have made to your system? i mean have you changed hardware component before?
No.., yupz... I always try what I get here when I think it could be done. not just on this thread, but also on other threads in this forum. I learned many things from this forum.
This means the driver changed the installation ID.....hmm very interesting I didn't know that. That means when one installs w8 retail and activates it out of the box and installs later the OEM drivers it can become deactivated..?! I know important for the ID is the HardDisk UUID and the MAC address of the NIC, but not the drivers of those...
That's strange, I activate Windows 8.1 Pro all the time, make a backup image, THEN I install the drivers, and that doesn't mess the activation. Also one good thing to note, Office 2010 Pro, if I install it and activate it using my genuine key, then install the drivers, the activation is lost and I have to re-activate. But with Office 2013 this was fixed. If I activate it and make an image before installing the drivers, then install all my drivers, the activation is still intact as we know my case was different, it wasn't about the drivers, something in the setupbox made the default installation key snap on to the Windows activated key and there was no way to reverse or change that without a format/image back to the point before that happened. very weird, even Microsoft staff were puzzled and didn't know how to fix my issue without a format
yups....(not sure) it happen to me when Upgrade win8.1 Ent with second leaked spring Update. Windows still active, but i got diferent InstallationID. I must reinstall my vga driver, to get same InstallationID with my win8.1 RTM. PS. sory cannot give screenshoot, it happen long time ago with my client computer. not in my computer.