Completely stumped with activation problem - NP915S3

Normally, I am pretty good at finding my way through this sort of thing, but this has me completely confused.

Was having some minor issues with my NP915 and decided to do a Windows refresh. Have done that with my desktop and my tablet (Surface Pro 2) without any difficulty. But, with this laptop, refresh broke Windows Activation. The laptop is not activated and won't activate.

I tried all the usual things I could think of or find: extracting the product key using KeyFinder and entering it using slui 3, trying online activation using the same key and slui 4; using the vbs script to try and match the OS product key to the hardware one ... absolutely no luck. Next, I tried a full Windows Rest and still have the same problem. I've tried turning off SecureBoot and using mixed UEFI and CSM OS ... no luck.

Next, I thought I would do a full restore of the factory image. Used a Lexar 32GB USB stick and Samsung Recovery to export a factory image (format as a boot device). Here's where I run into a new issue: when I boot to it and load recovery, it seems to list an HDD as the only device available for recovery from. Is that the same issue that trips with SanDisk USB sticks? Or, is that the image from the USB drive? Or, how do I get it to recognize the image on the USB drive?

Really hoping someone can help me get my way out of this one of three ways:

1. Fix activation without having to reinstall everying
2. Get the factory restore to use the image on the USB stick
3. Can I install Win 8 from an .iso and have it activate using the hardware keys on the motherboard? Are there any particular steps I should take?

Thanks for any help anyone can give me!

 

Hello Johnny, welcome to NBR.

Although it is great to have that Recovery backup on the USB stick (Factory Image Backup), I would not recommend you use that on the original drive if you still have the original Recovery on there: Restoring from the USB stick will completely re-image the drive, and if something goes wrong (say the backup is corrupt) you will lose your original Recovery.

Instead, just boot Recovery (F4 immediately after power on) then do a factory restore from there, as described in this Samsung guide. This will restore your Windows installation to factory state.

If you Enable Maintain user data when doing the restore, it should not affect your data. But I would still absolutely back up any important data before doing this. If you enable Partition settings it will wipe and repartition the entire disk (except Recovery itself), but I don't think that should be necessary in your case.

Once you have a working Windows installation, if you still have Activation problems, you can call Microsoft support. We have reports that they are quite helpful in these situations: You own that license and they want it to be working for you.

If you DO want to restore from the USB stick, of course you can. Again, it will wipe and re-image the entire drive (assuming it was a factory Image backup you made). I do remember one other member reporting about it displaying the HDD as restore source when booting from the USB. I am not sure if that is merely a display error (and it uses the USB stick after all) or whether it detects the Factory Image on your Recovery partition and decides to use that instead of the USB. That USB Factory Image Backup is mostly for re-imaging a blank drive.

In any case should you keep OS Mode Selection=UEFI OS while doing all these things. You can temporarily disable SecureBoot (although some have reported they didn't even need that). It's not that you cannot switch to non-UEFI mode (Legacy BIOS, CSM) but it will require completely wiping your drive and re-installing Windows. In BIOS, also make sure Fast Boot/Fast BIOS is disabled in order to boot from USB.

If none of this works and you want to perform a clean install, you must have Win8 install media matching the exact same Windows version as the one delivered with your laptop (Base vs Pro and same language). In that case it should automatically pick up the Product Key in your BIOS. Or you can enter the key since you extracted it.

If you create a USB for installation (from the ISO) make sure it is formatted as FAT32, since UEFI doesn't support booting from NTFS.

Hope this gets you going. Please keep us posted.

 

Thanks for the helpful reply.

I think I'm being confused by Samsung's Recovery utility a bit. It's trying to be a bit user friendly. The only Recovery point it shows me is dated this past Monday (the day I reset Windows). I have assumed that isn't a factory image because of the date but would restore a backup that has the same issue. Based on your response, I am thinking that I have that wrong and that is the factory image and the reason for the date is that's the date that the laptop thinks is its Day 1?

If that's the case, makes much more sense to use that for the restore.

 

Puzzling. And you DID enter recovery through F4, not through the Samsung Recovery app in Windows?

I wonder if Windows' Refresh actually modified the factory image in Recovery (ie the factory restore point). I don't like that. In any case, I would try and restore the earliest Restore Point available in there, whatever the date.

If the only problem is the activation and everything else works, give Microsoft support a call. You own that Windows license, and shouldn't have activation problems. That's a Microsoft issue.

 

I did it both through F4 and a bootable USB stick. In the end, MS may be the answer.

 

Worked fine in the end. Used the HDD recovery point and it was a factory image.

Painful as I then had to wait for 82 Windies updates and then upgrade to 8.1, but it's working fine.

Thanks for the help.

Sent from my RM-877_nam_canada_235 using Tapatalk

 

Great, good work there. And thanks for the update!