Warning: Do not activate free media center pack from Windows 8

[jywang]

If you activate the free media center pack from last year, it will work for a few hours and then you will lose activation once it realizes the free media center activation was for Windows 8. At that point you will have to do a factory restore to get your original 8.1 Pro back since the buy button no longer works and you can't remove the media center pack.



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[jywang]

Just to clarify, this is for Surface Pro 2 with Windows 8.1 Pro...

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[garak0410]

Good tip...I tried Media Center on my first gen Surface Pro long before 8.1 and it screwed it up badly...not sure why it is so quirky.

 

[jywang]

I restored back to factory and paid the $9.99 to upgrade to Media Center 8.1 using PayPal. No problems so far.

 

[minhthanhvn]

Just use your pack key. When the surface restarts, the windows becomes inactivated. Activate it by phone. Everything is done. You will have Windows media center and your windows is activated

 

[jywang]

Actually I tried to activate by phone and the customer rep said that the media pack was blocked and will not work. Several others have reported similar issues. For $9.99 it isn't worth the trouble.

 

[minhthanhvn]

What I said is that you have to activate by phone by answer machine. It had me input the installation ID, and my installation ID was absolutely valid. Therefore, it told the code I had to input, and I was done.

 

[jywang]

I did this and it didn't work. I escalated to talk to someone and they said the 8.0 media pack keys are blocked now.

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