I'll see what happens about the keys. The issue is caused by my buying one more Dell Precision, this time an M6800 to be my principal PC, but instead of a W7 Pro sticker in the battery compartment, it has a W8 key in the BIOS, so either I'll have to move the Ultimate build, for which I still have the DVD and key, from an old PC which I'll probably sell on afterwards, or else I might try upgrading my standard Pro build to W8.
Do you happen to know, do the keys that work with W8 also work with W8.1?
Unfortunately, I can answer this definitively now as "No!", the BIOS key would not work trying to upgrade to W8.1, but W8 has automatically authenticated itself.
And now I'm reminded all over again why always I've stuck with W7, the tile interface is such a pile of shite for a mouse/keyboard system. Which of the 'classic' look alternative shells do people recommend for W8?
Well, let's think about it for a second.
There was an "App" in the MSSTore for upgrading to 8.1 . It's gone.
I can find these, but these are 8.1.1 and unlikely to work
unless the right SSU precedes them.
Windows 8.1.1
Name: Windows8.1-KB2919355-x64.msu
Size: 724339463 bytes (690 MiB)
SHA256: B0C9ADA530F5EE90BB962AFA9ED26218C582362315E13B1BA97E59767CB7825D
Name: Windows8.1-KB2919355-x86.msu
Size: 334517159 bytes (319 MiB)
SHA256: F8BECA5B463A36E1FEF45AD0DCA6A0DE7606930380514AC1852DF5CA6E3F6C1D
*******
You may be blocked by using your media, and the media does not
accept a W8.0 key as valid during installation. But if the key
was offered *after* the materials were installed, it would have worked.
https://superuser.com/questions/650019/how-to-use-windows-8-1-rtm-with-8-0-key
We need to give Rufus a try, to see if it can bypass that behavior,
and finish installing whatever you are trying to install. Rufus does
nothing special in this case, but we get to choose UEFI or legacy install
(I picked UEFI), and it puts the ISO files on a USB stick.
I found a Youtube video, and it recommends making this file.
ei.cfg Drop into "sources" folder of Rufus stick
-------
[Edition ID]
professional
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0
Comes up with Product key prompt, but offers a Skip.
Don't need a key to finish Win 8.0 (to match your current
setup perhaps).
I then took a Win 8.1 DVD and popped that into the machine,
and run the Setup.exe on it. That did an Upgrade install.
It has a place for license key, but it already had a skip.
en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso <=== That might be the DVD
*******
Strictly speaking, this isn't necessary. I had hoped this would
patch win80 to win81, but it was not to be. After installing
win81, I set it to work anyway.
You can use the UpdateGenerator.exe here, and pull down materials.
Select Legacy OS and tick one or both of x86 or x64 Windows 8.1 .
Don't forget to de-select the Win10 boxes on the front page of
the application, before visiting the Legacy OS items.
https://download.wsusoffline.net/
https://download.wsusoffline.net/wsusoffline120.zip
Name: wsusoffline120a.zip
Size: 6,507,097 bytes (6354 KiB)
SHA256: 4D6A2EE08864E8F6338D71B2A8627038073DB5FC5C2BE9424E00C50C20A38FB2
In the Client folder, is UpdateInstaller.exe, and when you move or copy
the entire wsusoffline kit to the target machine, you run that
to kick off operations. You don't want to run that in totally automated
mode (complete with reboots). Run it manually. During each phase, it
does a portion of the work. For example, early on, it applies Microsoft
patches to Windows Update. It installs security certificates. It makes
sure you have the SHA2 (SHA256) signing verification package installed
so your OS can read the (new and incompatible) wsusscn2.cab (which could be
1GB or more of your download procedures so far). The Win7 I started running
the kit on, already has SHA2 support installed some years ago, so there
were no problems running the kit and getting it to select updates.
In the case of Win81, it didn't seem to have all that much logic in it.
Some of the updates are statically determined. These are the "kit won't work
unless we do these first" files. The 160 security updates or whatever, those
I think are computed from the wsusscn2.cab .
The materials on that are not a waste, because you're going to need to patch
the OS anyway. There might be a total of five reboots before the entire logic
of the installer scripts is completed. You basically keep running the installer
executable, ticking the boxes consistently from run to run, and eventually
it will say "nothing to update" and you're done. Run winver.exe and celebrate.
I've even used their Vista SP2 patching kit, back in the day, and it
was the only thing that could make WindowsUpdate work in Vista. Today,
it can't work, because Vista doesn't have SHA2 signing support and
the Microsoft mess would likely fail before it became airborne. It took
me six hard days of work and three attempts, to get that one done. Which
is surely a record for me, in terms of patching exercises.
The letdown in Win8, is the disabling of the install-only keys we used
to use to make installing easier. But that ei.cfg achieves the same result.
So far, there is no license key and no attempt to enter a license key.
You can use "slmgr" to offer a license key, once you are happy the
install went well. At least one thread claims that presentation
of a Win80 key, to a finished Win81 installation, will be accepted,
whereas presentation of the key to the "Skip" box early on, can fail.
The installed OS seems to work properly. But you'll be the judge of
that, since I have no MSDM-laden machines for test.
Paul