You now have a fully working Windows 8.1 system fresh-installed with only a Windows 8 product key. You can enter your Windows 8 product key here, and Windows 8.1 will accept it for some reason. After the installation process completes, you’ll see a product key prompt. You won’t be prompted for a product key while installing it. You can now install Windows 8.1 normally using the installation media you created. Install Windows 8.1 Normally and Enter Your Product Key Afterwards We’ll just need to modify the Windows 8.1 installation media a bit. If we had a way of skipping the product key prompt during the installation process and entering the key later, we could install Windows 8.1 fresh - luckily, we do have a way of doing that. However, Windows 8.1 will accept the Windows 8 product key if you enter it on the desktop after installing Windows 8.1 - no, we don’t know why it works this way. The Windows 8.1 installer refuses to accept the Windows 8 product key and won’t allow us to install Windows 8.1 with it. In reality, there’s a way we can get around this limitation. Only people who purchase Windows 8.1 can install it fresh, not people who origianlly purchased Windows 8. Microsoft wants you to install Windows 8 normally and use the Windows 8.1 upgrade offer in the Windows Store to get Windows 8.1.

RELATED: What You Need to Know About Windows 8.1 It’s a free upgrade to every single Windows 8 user, so there’s absolutely no reason to introduce a new product key system. This normally makes sense, but Windows 8.1 isn’t really a different version of Windows.

You also can’t install the original version of Windows 8 with a Windows 8.1 product key. You can’t enter a Windows 8 product key into the Windows 8.1 installer, just as you can’t enter a Windows 7 product key into the Windows 8 installer.

The problem is that Windows 8.1 product keys are different from Windows 8 product keys. The Problem, and How We’ll Fix It (Old Version)

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