Factory restore on 2 year old Windows 8 Gateway fails to validate Windows 8 from encrypted bios

Hello all. For two weeks now I've been trying to help an 84 year old veteran fix his virus infected 2 year old Windows 8 Gateway (Walmart) desktop.

The poor old guy was a first time PC buyer when he purchased this PC two years ago, & didn't comprehend the implications of not renewing his anti-virus 60 day trial version. Consequently after continuing to operate his PC online for almost two years afterwards, he got badly infected. I went over there to help him a couple of weeks ago & it was obviously infected. I installed Malewarebytes, which found over 2100 malewares & 7 trojans...

I've used factory restore from both inside Windows 8 & from boot, & it of course works but won't validate Windows 8 once it completes. I've even tried clearing cmos to no avail. It simply cannot read the encrypted product ID key from the UEFI bios.

I could go into another (horrible) story about the third party out of warranty support vendor Acer references on their site, but really what good would it do at this point?

Does anyone have a fix for this?

Thanks in advance for your time, consideration, & effort!

regards,

Frank

Accepted answers

IronFly

i would try to use the Microsoft phone activation before installing windows 7 (need to set Leagacy, disable secure boot, sometimes you need to update your BIOS too to have CSM option)

from windows 8 desktop press:

windows key logo + r

type

slui.exe 4

press enter

Choose to activate by phone then follow on screen instructions.

All comments

IronFly

Which error is giving the validation tool?

Notz

Thanks for replying.

I'm not at the PC again until noon & I can't rememeber the oXXX*.* (i think) form error code, but on the Validate window it says 'unknown error'.

Also could you tell me if it's possible to load Win 7 on this PC if I disable UEFI Security Boot section in Bios?

Thanks again

IronFly

i would try to use the Microsoft phone activation before installing windows 7 (need to set Leagacy, disable secure boot, sometimes you need to update your BIOS too to have CSM option)

from windows 8 desktop press:

windows key logo + r

type

slui.exe 4

press enter

Choose to activate by phone then follow on screen instructions.

Notz

Thanks for replying.

I've already done this, & the Microsoft rep was very kind & helpful, but couldn't give me the number to enter because he said that would have to come from Acer. He said Acer would have sent the owner an email with pertinant info upon registering the PC when the client first purchased it (he's deleted all his emails since then). He did however transfer me to another person in tech who remote accessed the pc for 2-3 hours trying to find a solution, to no avail. They did this for free too.

By the time I tried this I had already restored the quick way, & at the end of the remote access the MS rep suggested I try the long/complete way, then referred me to Acer if that didn't work.