Win 8.1 activation problem

TheGamingGeneral

TheGamingGeneral

TheGamingGeneral

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Hi, I bought a new SSD the other day, and decided to properly move to win 8. I bought it last year when they offered the £25 upgrade but didnt really use it, PC is still same spec as then with an additional video card.

I just finished putting in win 8.1, and was looking through my emails and found the code that microsoft sent to also add media centre which was free at the time (for 8.0).

Put the code in and it said it wouldnt accept it. Fine, I am not all that bothered about it. Installed some other software, done a reboot and I am now getting the text on the bottom right saying: Windows 8.1 Pro with media centre build 9600. I immedietly thought oh dear, activation has gone a bit daft. When I went into settings to activate, my 8.1 key is there but it says it's invalid. When I put in the media centre key it too, also comes up as invalid.

Any suggestions?
 
tamzzy said:
iirc, you cant do a fresh install of 8.1 with an 8 key (although there are workarounds)
Click to expand...

Yes I found out this the hard way. I did find a work around and 8 was ok, going to 8.1 didnt work so I had to start again. I have done the following:

Windows 7 > Windows 8 (using upgrade key I bought last year) > Windows 8.1 > Added media centre.

It appears to of gone pear shaped at adding media centre......
 
I think you had to install and activate media centre by the 31st of January this year for it to actually be free and activate correctly. Just ordering the key wasn't enough to claim a free copy. I suspect this may be what is causing the problem.
There is instructions to remove media centre here, your regular windows 8 key should work after.
To be honest, my copy of media centre was a bit of a pig to install, I switched to XBMC a while ago.
 
Last edited:
I did a fresh install of windows 8 then did the 8.1 upgrade. same kind of key.

It was having the same problem, I just did the activation over the phone. It gave me a key I had to input over the phone, which I did and then it gave me another to input into the computer. All activated fine after that.
 
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