OEMs have embedded your licence key into the MSDM table inside the BIOS.
Internal HDD has failed or has been damaged. Due to some reason, the OEM partition table has been removed/lost. Applies to
For some reason the Windows 8.1 installation does not accept a Windows 8 licence key.
If your laptop is a Windows 8 OEM system, use these keys to initially install Windows 8.1, post-installation and once on-line; Activate Windows 8.1 using your Windows 8 embedded key.
I used an Xubuntu LiveUSB to do this, opened up Terminal and type in this command below,
$ sudo hd /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
Which resulted in this,
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo hd /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM 00000000 4d 53 44 4d 55 00 00 00 03 ad 41 43 52 53 59 53 |MSDMU.....ACRSYS| 00000010 41 43 52 50 52 44 43 54 01 00 00 00 31 30 32 35 |ACRPRDCT....1025| 00000020 00 00 04 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 |................| 00000030 00 00 00 00 1d 00 00 00 ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** |........XXXX-XXX| 00000040 ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** |XXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-| 00000050 ** ** ** ** ** |XXXXX| 00000055
The X’s are the Windows 8 OEM Embedded Licence Key.
Open a CMD window with Administrative Privilages
Enter this command below;
powershell "(Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey"
Once entered it should produce the UEFI Embedded Windows Licence Key.
Microsoft only started to embed OEM Licences into the UEFI of laptops recently, starting with Windows 8. Systems operating Windows 7, Vista or XP do not have embedded licencing such as this.