Windows 8 / 8.1 key problem

[holyprof]

So i have this problem, after googling it, saw many ppl encountering the same but no solution.

I bought a Toshiba laptop abroad, brought it home and it works perfectly, came with windows 8.
Later i bought a local version of the same OS, Windows 8 home. It installed and worked perfectly, updates and everything.

But when i accepted the Micrsoft "offer" to upgrade to 8.1 it took like an hour and at the end i was greeted by a message that my key is invalid. From what i've read from forums so far, this is a bug / feature (depens on point of view) that "ties" the motherboard's serial number to a certain windows key/version and that's what preventing the 8.1 upgrade.

I tried to obtain help from the shop where i bought the local version but got an answer that it's a known Microsoft problem with no solution so far. From what i read on other forums, people tried to get help from laptop manufacturer and were sent to Microsoft, which sent them back to laptop manufacturer so I didn't even try contacting them.

I wasn't very conerned about the upgrade until yesterday, when i read that only Windows 7 SP1 and 8.1 will be eligible for the Windows 10 free upgrade.

Any help is appreciated, i've tried upgarding 3 times and had to do a complete system recovery to get my laptop working again.

 

[USAFRet]

It's not "a known Microsoft problem".
If it was indeed a valid OS license you bought, then there should be no problem.

The only ones who know if it was a valid OS license you bought was the people you bought it from. I'm suspecting it wasn't.

 

[holyprof]

I found at least 4 other people from around the world with exactly the same problem. If the local windows 8 version isn't valid, how does it work with secure UEFI boot and windows update?

From another thread here i read that windows reads the serial from the motherboard and expects to find exactly the version associated with it so any upgrade could break validation.

 

[USAFRet]

The motherboard does not care what OS is installed.
An OEM Windows license cares what motherboard it is installed with.

 

[holyprof]

I've read many of your answers here on tom's and they're all great but here it seems you don't understand what the problem is or i didn't explain it well.

Next time this will serve me as a lesson not to buy stuff abroad. If i had a locally bought pc, could just phone M$ and ask for assistance. It sucks to be a Microsoft customer but all my work and games are tied to the windows platform and there's no way out of it.

Seems i'm stuck with 8.0 till the end. Might as well put an old Windows 7 32 bit retail i have lying around from my old PC and get rid of the annoying windows 8 "features".

 

[USAFRet]

I've read many of your answers here on tom's and they're all great but here it seems you don't understand what the problem is or i didn't explain it well.

Next time this will serve me as a lesson not to buy stuff abroad. If i had a locally bought pc, could just phone M$ and ask for assistance. It sucks to be a Microsoft customer but all my work and games are tied to the windows platform and there's no way out of it.

Seems i'm stuck with 8.0 till the end. Might as well put an old Windows 7 32 bit retail i have lying around from my old PC and get rid of the annoying windows 8 "features".

Right.
It all depends on what exactly you bought. Foreign market + 'cheap' = maybe not so legit.
The only people who know what you bought are the ones who sold it to you, and maybe the MS activation servers.

 

[holyprof]

I didn't buy the PC because of the low price, it happened that i was there and needed a laptop so i bought it. Since it came with OEM toshiba branded windows 8 i guess if i restored it to original state it WILL upgrade to 8.1 but i don't want windows in foreign language. Maybe i should have bought full retail windows instead of the oem license in my languge (although the OEM should have worked as well).

Thanks a lot for your help.