Microsoft → Re: [WIN8] Installing Win8 with an OEM key

A question about this....

I have a RETAIL (so not OEM) DVD for Windows 8.0 Professional with license key. If I get my hands on a retail copy of Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Update, would my key work?

It should because when I get the 8.1 update from the store while running 8, I get no key issues.
Maybe doing a clean install with 8.1 is different? I don't see why it should be though, maybe others might know.

Yep. You can do it through the store but anyone wishing to do a clean install is deliberately screwed by Microsoft unless you have a RETAIL copy of windows 8.

»dellwindowsreinstallatio ··· 8-1-iso/

This is not just for Dell. If you have a retail copy of Windows 8 your key will work to do a clean install of 8.1 from ISO.

If you only have OEM Windows 8 key it is possible to do a clean install of 8.1 but you have to use generic keys and some tricks. It's SICK what Microsoft did to ALL those who have OEM Windows 8.

Darn, I just downloaded all the 8.1 ISO's and made the 8.1 AIO from that one post.

I got in to the recovery partitions on the laptop hard drive and in the first one there is an 430mb boot.wim file and Samsung's WinClon program. I guess that has something to do with recovery?
In the 2nd partition there is a 15gb install.wim file and I'm going to copy it over to the NAS drive and open it up with the Windows System Image Manager program and see what it does.