Notebooks & Netbooks

[magomerlano]

Hello,

 i've just bought an Acer Aspire E1 notebook with Windows 8.1 pre-installed.

I've separately bought a Windows 8.1 PRO dvd with OEM license, as i needed the PRO version for the Hyper-V support.

Now i would like to have a clean/fresh install of my dvd on this laptop, removing the "home/standard" version that came with it.

Merely installing the product isn't enough.

I formatted the system partition before installing and run the install program booting from the DVD, but :

1) no product key has ever been asked to me by the installation procedure
2) windows installs correctly and it is a "clean" setup since i don't have the acer support tools installed anymore

3) alas, this still is the "home/standard" edition, without the PRO features enabled!

I understand this has something to do with the product keys being stored into the BIOS/UEFI, but is there any proved workaround?

To be more specific, i've found a walkthrough (covering win 8, but i don't think things have changed between 8 and 8.1)that suggests to manually add a config file with the "new" product key in the installation image, thus bypassing the UEFI-stored key:

http://www.blogsolute.com/windows-8-clean-installation-product-key-do-not-match/25990/

Is this procedure correct and "guaranteed" ?

My fear is to end up with a new installation that doesn't work (and/or with a non-working product activation) and with a "forever lost" old installation...

Thanks

 matteo

[Acer-Blayn]

Have you tried contacting Microsoft to see what they recommend? Unfortunately, I do not know why it would not prompt you for a product key afte doing a clean install. I believe you are correct that it does have something to do with the key in the BIOS, but I don't have any suggestions on how to activate your copy of 8.1 Pro.