Windows * activation failed

after buy Win8 for $40 I had to be running win7, with using win8 most of my drives were messed up, I wiped out the whole HD, before re-installing I put another HD in the hot swappable slot, I would not think by doing this would be that much of a change, was not able to activate win8, trying to find help on Microsoft web site was pulling teeth I got the impression they did not want you to call for help to activate to prove my point I did find the toll free number to activate Windows products, 1-888-571-2048 , you get a message that ask you if you are activating WinXP, no , the other options were not Win8, I had to speak into the phone Windows 8, finally I got a live person, I told her I could not activate win8, somewhere before that the message said are you at the activation window however it is different than previous versions, the woman told to input the win key + r , run , then she told me to enter , msdt then ok , she gave me maybe an 8 to 10 digit code , then next , then restart after that then it would auto activate win8 which it did, it seems to me that the win8 download you buy if they are not making it difficult to re-activate if you run in to trouble and have to re-install, if you buy it for $40 you have to be already running win7, when downloading it what I did is I choose to download win8 as an ISO file that way I could burn it and have a back up copy, during some point of this process they supply you with a registration key code so it can be activated actually you can not even start the install process unless you enter your key code, at the time you see the key code you can not copy it and paste it into notepad , so what I did I took a screenshot of it , save it saved the file as win8 key code, then I printed it, hope any of this helps

 

Hi spacearea51...not going to upgrade to Windows 8 (Windows "crates"), but thanks for this, anyway. I see you joined just to explain this to everyone. Print out those the key code if you're using an .iso to upgrade to 8...