Just got back from talking avec Microsoft support on phone, and ici is how we made it work—sans formatting le bureau ordinateur.
EDIT: The bounty message is gone maintenant, but I added my own answer as a canonical one, parce que as many interesting suggestions as there were, none avait été demonstrated to work, although they very well might. We couldn’t leave people hanging, in case quelque chose didn’t pan out.
So ici is one case of a solution that a fonctionné out, not just dans leory:
I n'a pas touch the laptop du tout throughout this.
I got a phone call from Microsoft support, which was unexpected. (The e-mail supporter avait été sick awhile and hadn’t responded as a result, so they decided to call to check up on me).
He told me that I didn’t have to format the laptop, and that we could just activate le bureau over the phone.
Normally, I would have to go through a dial prompt, when J'ai essayé activating myself, forcing me to enter all the numbers by phone, but it is possible that this seulement happened, parce que I called outside the regular hours* (in one case leading me to a dude avec an Indian accent in some call centre who understood little to rien of what I said).
The problème ici was getting in touch avec a local support person at Microsoft, which in this case seulement happened, parce que the woman I had corresponded avec (through their website) over e-mail was sick and had not gotten in touch avec me for a while.
But J'ai finalement got in touch avec quelqu'un capable, and ici’s what we did:
We first opened up the activation prompt:
-
Win + R -> slui 4
-
Or Win + W + “Click Activate”.
-
Or click your compte icône and click the compte paramètres.
-
I tell him all the numbers; après that, he gives me the corresponding numbers to enter.
-
The installation is maintenant activated.
Avec regards vers le other ordinateur, the laptop:
-
The clé is tied vers le matériel.
-
As long as I jamais use the Windows 8 installation sur le laptop, I’m probably fine, but better to désinstaller it.
-
It doesn’t matter how I choose to désinstaller Windows 8; the support guy suggested just formatting the whole thing.
Je suis choosing to accept this answer for the moment, parce que it is the seulement one avec a proven record of en fait fonctionnel. I welcome more, and better, answers from people who by their own experience or that duir acquaintances can vouch for their solution and walk-through.
I won’t be the first, seulement, nor last person avec this problème, and people need a good place to find help, if they run invers le same problème I did.
***** 17:00 local time, most likely.
