Windows 8 Key Issues

Windows 8. Just saying that conjures up visions of death, famine, and all the other horribles of the world. My dealing it with today was no different. To be fair, installing it is a breeze, especially if the install source happens to be from a USB 3.0 flash drive plugged into a 3.0 port. My issue today was with installing it from scratch on a system that had a failed hard drive.

You see, this system originally had Windows 7 on it, and had been upgraded to 8. Fine, whatever, the Windows 8 key was in a text file on the desktop. Backed up all the data, replaced the failing drive, installed Windows 8 and got all the data transferred over no problem. However, out of habit from older editions of Windows, I don’t activate Windows until I have every last driver installed on the system.

So color me surprised when I entered the key that I knew worked and got an error. Reading the error code, it was 0xC004F061, and the flavor text to go with it was “The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations.”

Ugh.

So here I am, system all ready to be used, 300+ GB of data transferred to it, all updates installed including 8.1, and I face the prospect of having to wipe it all away to install Windows 7 using the sticker on the case and then upgrading it to 8.

Yeah, no.

I can understand the reasons behind selling an upgrade license at a reduced rate to entice customers of older OS’s into upgrading and using the latest and greatest (pffhahaha) edition of Windows. I really can. But having me start from scratch just to jump through these hoops does not sit well with me. So naturally, I turn to the all-mighty, all-knowing God that is Google, and see how many others have suffered at this licensing quandary, and if there was a solution better than going from Windows 7 to 8 again.

Yes, there is. And it’s easy! Hurray! All one has to do is start regedit, and surf over to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE

Once there, there should be an entry named MediaBootInstall with a DWORD value of 1. Change this to read 0. “Easy easy easy!” you might be shouting. Well, you should shut up for now, as we aren’t finished. The next part is simple: open an elevated command prompt and type slmgr /rearm. You should get a popup declaring success, and a request for you to restart. In this case, I wholeheartedly encourage you to heed its advice and restart the system. Once you do, Windows activation should be more accommodating in your quest to use an upgrade key for a clean install.

Thanks for the help, random posts on the internet!