what puzzles me in this story :
the machine was bought with windows pre-installed. if the bios holds the key then an install of the EXACT SKU will work without a hitch. installation of a different SKU will need a new key.
something doesn't fit in the story...
I assume this is directed at me, though not completely sure. I kind of resent you calling this a story, but I guess I am flaming Microsoft and Acer so I suppose it is only fair to give any reasonable information that people may be interested in.
Yes windows was pre installed.
The name of the company selling this on EBay is called
http://www.ebay.com.au/usr/oz.buy though my invoice came from a company called ECom computers who apparently have an office in Pitt Street Sydney. I have an Australian Tax invoice which Acer is happy with and have paid GST too. So it isn't grey market.
Dont know what you mean by an SKU is in this case. I have an SNID from ACER on the bottom. If you are talking about Microsoft Product Key, well apparently it is in the UEFI as it is no longer called BIOS on this machine. Either I cant access it, or the one I can access doesn't work.
One thing I did change in the Hardware, I did add and extra 4 gigabytes of ram. But from my understanding it doesn't effect the hardware ID. I haven't touched hardware apart from this.
As for something not fitting in this story, I agree, that's why I'm trying to get this fixed and expose this stupid situation where I bought something but can't use it.
The funny thing is that the machine worked (probably unactivated) up until two weeks ago but just recently it started bringing up these activation reminder screens every half an hour. Is this a change of Microsoft policy?
I will admit my son and I are stuck with Windows as it currently is the best gaming platform. I second the notion that Valve and Steam do this Licensing and Activation extremely well and I have never yet had a problem with them.
With Windows 7 and an OEM install, I have been able to use disk imaging software to clone the original disk onto a new replacement disk and the system continues to be authenticated. I can also make an image backup of the disk onto external media and then restore this backup onto a new disk and the system continues to be authenticated with the new disk in place.
So are we saying Microsoft has changed things in Windows 8 so that these things no longer work? If so, it seems like a major screw up and a reason to avoid buying any system with Windows 8 on it. How could you possibly live with a system that doesn't allow you to make a recovery image of your disk?
I cant answer this but I am interested in your answer. As I mentioned earlier I do have a hard drive with Windows 7 on it from my previous Dell laptop. I thought I could've possibly used this in the Acer?