20 replies to this topic

[HawkMan]

YouWhat, on 26 February 2013 - 11:56, said:

Try a program called SIW (The home edition), it will give you the license keys of both office and windows.

http://www.gtopala.c...iw-download.php

I have used this myself several times to retrieve keys off machines.

To late, he's already formatted. he has to call Asus.

[Simon-]

HawkMan, on 26 February 2013 - 09:37, said:

Yeah, but windows 8 in general doesn't have keys on the OEM laptops. just the RFID Windows 8 sticker under the laptop.

I have seen the new Windows 8 OEM stickers, they are very small, less than the size of a thumb, I recall that the Windows 7 sticker I saw on a powerbrick for a Zenbook was about the same size as the new Windows 8 ones. Pity he can't find one on this power brick, I thought that Product key stickers were mandatory for OEM systems, and I doubt he was sold a retail license. I would go back to place of purchase/ASUS and advise that a product key was not provided as it should have been.

[HawkMan]

It is provided just not in a clearly readable manner, it's embedded in the BIOS, and I'm not sure what's in the RFID on the win8 sticker.

Remember that on windows 8 you're not supposed to re-install, you're supposed to refresh or use the other built recovery functions.

[JaredFrost]

I don't know about yours, but my laptop that came with Windows 8 says the Windows version registered in the BIOS setup, maybe check to see if yours does.
When installing Windows, some things to try is make sure UEFI is enabled, not some hybred mode and install the 64bit version of Windows 8.

I was able to wipe out all the partitions on mine and install Windows 8 without issue(using technet ISO), it never asked for any key(but I still saved it beforeband) and activated without issue.
Windows 7 on the other hand, nothing but issues trying to install that with full UEFI on, I had to switch it to some hybred mode, I still dislike Windows 8, but the installation
process is much improved.

[Medfordite]

jumbochilli, on 26 February 2013 - 08:21, said:

Have you looked at your adapter, I have ux31e ultrabook and it's windows product key was on the adapter block?

Cheers
J.C

As hot as those bricks get from charging, I could only imagine a black sticker after a while from thermal transfer.

I called Toshiba on mine and was told it was in the UEFI Bios so no need to have it printed anywhere. I did do a re-install a month ago but used the built in recovery so no problems. If you got the Laptop w/o a OEM sticker, documentation or whatnot and it won't recover w/o a key then you might have to go the route of calling Asus or Microsoft like others have said.

Or, if you have return privileges (Within your product return window), exchange it for a new one and tell them it won't reinstall Windows 8. Most stores will chalk it up to hardware and send it back to factory. Who knows? You might have had a bad build in the first place that quality control missed when that worker responsible for loading the key into the machines was sick that day.

[Hitman2000]

Ok I have managed to fix it.

I made a new windows 8 pro bootable usb

I disabled secure boot and enabled csm

which allowed the usb to be detected, but the difference was this time the usb was detected as UEFI: USB HDD, which wasn't happening for my other usb

anyway installed and windows is activated, yay

also I have more of my 128gb ssd and no crappy asus recovery partitions.