W8 version - no COA

[KK20]

New Toshiba laptops with W8 pre-installed. I had various types, some had home, some PRO. When they arrived I disregarded W8 as we have a perfectly functioning W7 image that everyone loves. W8 training would make my life hell so W7 it was.

 

EES lets us downgrade a properly licensed PC (which they were) so away I went. Now I would like to trial messing about with W8(.1) and see how bad it would make my life. I picked the nearest spare laptop I could find which happened to be one of the toshibas that had W8 to begin with. However, I couldnt find a COA (none in the battery bay, under memory bay, none on PSU etc). This initially distressed me, no COA had me thinking of auditors dragging me away in shackles. However reading up on Activation 3 left me semi-safe in the knowledge that the BIOS tells W8 that it has a perfectly valid installation and key, im still not happy that a quick glance would appear to show an unlicensed laptop (albeit a small w8 sticker that would show me otherwise).

 

That being said, how can I tell what VERSION or W8 this laptop will had? How can you extract the info? As far as EES goes personally I dont care as I can happily use W8pro if need be and use our VLK MAK. Im assuming that in any case I can use slmgr /ipk and /ato to manually add our EES VLK MAK as appropriate (until I get the client count then i'll /ipk our KMS key) or will the BIOS try to override this?

[sted]

there is no traditional cos just a small win8 sticker something like the actual code is stored in the bios (like the old slic ones but in theory at least its not a dell code its a code specific to that pc)

 

also depending on the bios and your kms server you may need to activate them with mak keys as some cant detect an acceptable slic bios so as vlk licenses use that to see if there was something to upgrade from fail to activate with kms

Edited November 8, 2013 by sted

[FN-GM]

Why not use KMS instead of MAK? Just import the 8.1 KMS key into the KMS server. It will activate Windows 7 & 8 as well.

[sted]

Why not use KMS instead of MAK? Just import the 8.1 KMS key into the KMS server. It will activate Windows 7 & 8 as well.

 

some win8 pcs wont activate with mak (at least with 08r2 server) as the slic codes on bios dont exist/report right that may be fixed with a 2012/r2 server but ive found some pcs ive just had to use mak on to install windows 7 (and as its a server service id assume 8/8.1)

[FN-GM]

some win8 pcs wont activate with KMS (at least with 08r2 server) as the slic codes on bios dont exist/report right that may be fixed with a 2012/r2 server but ive found some pcs ive just had to use mak on to install windows 7 (and as its a server service id assume 8/8.1)

 

You made a typo

 

That will only happen with consumer devices. Dell & HP business devices for example will not have this issue. Schools shouldn't be using consumer devices really.

Edited November 8, 2013 by FN-GM

[KK20]

I had assumed that W8 KMS would have a different count to W7 so I would need to KMS 25 W8 machines. After looking this up I was incorrect so I will KMS from the outset. Our KMS is 2K8R2 and I havent patched it for W8 yet (but have for office 2013). The laptops do have the stickers and I hadnt noticed the colur difference for home/pro. Thank you for pointing that out (the one I was going to build as a test is a home so if there are any issues with using my EES KMS for a "home" SLIC BIOS i'll report back.

 

We do use a mixture of consumer and business on our network. Why? As part of our 5th form IGCSE they build a PC as part of their projects (the pupils have a budget and purchase the bits and build them - normal PC bits from SCAN). These PCs get added to the network along with the rest with the same image. I have not had any issues with W7 KMS though, if I start having with W8 KMS then great, that will cheer me up...

[FN-GM]

You will need to put another patch on if you decide to go to 8.1