8.1 Won't Activate After Recovery

[DocGreen]

Laptop shipped with 8, customer upgraded to 8.1. Customer had a problem with peripherals, performed factory restore and the problem went away, but now Windows won't activate... brought it to me.

I've attempted a complete destructive recovery (which required an 8.1 disk,) but I'm having the same problem and am unable to activate. Whenever I click the link to activate, the screen just clears and nothing happens. I've also noticed that it's unable to check for Windows Updates (it literally sat there "checking" for hours.)

Is this because of the 8 -> 8.1 upgrade?

 

[Markverhyden]

Who is the OEM? Did you/they make recovery disks from the recovery partition or were they included in the box?

 

[ohio_grad_06]

The newest build of Windows 10 allows activation from a Windows 7/8/8.1 key if I remember right. My wife's laptop that originally shipped with Windows 8 was having hard drive trouble so picked up an ssd and clean installed 10, laptop had never seen Windows 10 at all. Activated by itself first time. I didn't have to put a key in or anything. It pulled the key from the bios and just worked.

May try to clean install 10 see what happens. What is the oem as mark asked? Should not make a difference but the key should be in the bios.

If I remember correctly there is a thread that states to clean install 8.1 on an 8 system that you must clean install with a temporary 8.1 key, pull key from bios them activate with that. But as I said, myself I'd just skip 8/8.1, create a Windows 10 installer on usb then just boot from that, clean install and see where it is.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Are you using the latest ISO? Have you tried to retrieve the key from the BIOS and manually activate?

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Also a good suggestion by nline if they want to stay on 8.1.

 

[DocGreen]

OEM is Dell... no discs included and the customer didn't make a recovery disc. During recovery it asked for install media, so I used an 8.1 OEM disc that I had in the shop (it wouldn't accept the 8 disc.)

Haven't tried pulling the key from BIOS, but I'm not sure how much that would help, since it never gives me the option to enter a key. The activation window never even comes up... click the "activate windows" link and it just refreshes the desktop... nothing launches.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Get an up to date ISO. Google Windows 8.1 Media Creation Tool.

 

[DocGreen]

Get an up to date ISO. Google Windows 8.1 Media Creation Tool.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

 

[katz]

Sounds like a corrupted reinstall? At this point, If it were me, I would probably run DBAN & do a reinstall.

 

[Markverhyden]

OEM is Dell... no discs included and the customer didn't make a recovery disc. During recovery it asked for install media, so I used an 8.1 OEM disc that I had in the shop (it wouldn't accept the 8 disc.)

Haven't tried pulling the key from BIOS, but I'm not sure how much that would help, since it never gives me the option to enter a key. The activation window never even comes up... click the "activate windows" link and it just refreshes the desktop... nothing launches.

Sounds like it might just be a corrupt install. As @nlinecomputers said the current W8 ISO's should work for OEM's as well. I've yet to use a different OEM ISO to install W8. I know in the past they would work fine in XP and W7.

 

[DocGreen]

Get an up to date ISO. Google Windows 8.1 Media Creation Tool.

I probably let the media creation tool run for 4 hours last night, and it never downloaded a single KB... just sat there spinning the stupid dots around saying "0% complete."

 

[Porthos]

I probably let the media creation tool run for 4 hours last night, and it never downloaded a single KB... just sat there spinning the stupid dots around saying "0% complete."

Are you doing this on the suspect computer? If so do it from your own computer.

 

[DocGreen]

Are you doing this on the suspect computer? If so do it from your own computer.

Doing it from my own

 

[Porthos]

I just made one here and it went quick on my 50 meg cable. Should have timed it.

 

[DocGreen]

I just made one here and it went quick on my 50 meg cable. Should have timed it.

Maybe it's being blocked somehow by something on my network (can't imagine what that would be though.) I'll try logging into a server at another location and see if it works from there, then just file-transfer it over.

 

[Porthos]

Is this computer your working on home/pro 32/64 bit.

 

[DocGreen]

Is this computer your working on home/pro 32/64 bit.

Mine is W10 pro x64... the customer's is supposed to be W8 Core x64, but it looks like someone installed W8(.1?) Pro over it.

BTW I was able to remote into another computer and start downloading the ISO.

 

[Porthos]

Get the core and clean install.

 

[DocGreen]

My job would be a lot easier if customers would just tell me what they've done instead of relying on me to play detective...