This kind of installation is made possible by applications that will turn a regular USB flash drive into a bootable device that carries all the necessary files for successfully installing the OS. Among the utilities of this sort, there is Windows 8 USB Installer Maker. With a neat interface and displaying the utmost ease of use, this program allows you to modify any USB drive so as it becomes an installation media for the chosen operating system. The whole procedure requires only a few steps to configure and then the utility will do its job. Windows 8 USB Installer Maker requires a connected flash drive that has at least 4GB of free space and the ISO image that contains the installation files for Windows 8. Make sure you don't have anything important onto that drive, because it will have to be formatted in the NTFS file system.Īs soon as the drive selection has been made and the DVD image loaded, there is nothing more to do than wait because the operation is carried out automatically. Even if the program may appear to be non-responsive, you should leave it to its devices because it is normal for it to behave like that.Īfter the small window that informs you about the successful completion of the process appears, make sure you check the log area where it should be written 'Successfully updated NTFS filesystem bootcode'. In case this string is not present there, pressing the 'Fix USB boot' button will take care of it and your new Windows 8 installation USB flash drive will be ready for use. In conclusion, thanks to the simplicity in usage, this program is one of the best choices for beginners, but also for pretty much any user who doesn't want to spend a lot of time in front of the PC trying to squeeze the setup files for Windows 8 onto an USB drive, while making it bootable as well.You probably heard that this time around Microsoft is letting people clean install Windows 8 using an upgrade installation media (e.g., DVD or USB drive). However the catch is that you need to have a previous valid version of Windows already installed in your PC to properly activate the operating system.Īs the guys from Lifehacker pointed out, if you are using the “Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant”, you are all set. But if you had a legitimate previous version of Windows and you mistakenly formatted the hard drive, moved to a new drive (e.g., Solid State Drive) or if you installed one of the “Previews” or “Windows 8 Enterprise RTM” not knowing that these versions of the operating system cannot be upgraded to Windows 8, you cannot do the “Custom” install, even though you may still have the product key sticker on the side of the PC. You’ll be able to do the installation, but you get an error 0x8007007B or error 0xC004F061, saying that the product key can only be used to upgrade ( “The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installation”). Now apparently there is a workaround that fixes Windows 8 activation problem and makes possible to perform a clean install of Windows 8 using the upgrade media without a previous version of Windows already installed in your PC. Search for regedit, and press Enterto launch the Registry Editor. Navigate through the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/ Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool 'Insert USB Device' Screen. You should now see the Step 3 of 4: Insert USB device screen, as shown above. In this step, you'll choose the flash drive or other USB device you'd like to copy the Windows 8 installation files to. Find the USB device in the drop-down box and then choose the green Begin copying button. Type the following command and press Enter: slmgr /rearm Then double-click on the MediabootInstallkey in the right pane.Įxit the Windows Registry, use the Windows key + X keyboard shortcut to bring the Power User menu and press the letter A to open the Command Prompt as an administrator. Restart your computer to complete the task. Once you are back into the OS, try to run the Activation utility as you would normally do and you should be able to do so without any errors.
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