N56J doesn't fill in Win8 product key upon fresh install

I have a 1 day old N56J which I've removed the 5400rpm drive out of. I also have a 16GB usb flash recovery drive made in windows8 on this very machine (before I removed the HD), I have a Win 8.1 x64 DVD I had laying around, and I have the "Product Key" which I got using Magic Jellybean (again, before I removed the HD).

I put in an empty SSD, booted off the Win 8.1 dvd and noticed the product key wasn't automatically filled in using data from the bios. So I typed in the one Magic Jellybean gave me, and it wasn't accepted.

How can I install an OS on this SSD? I have what I assumed to be a valid key, I have a windows disk, and shouldn't the bios have all the info needed to tell the windows installer I'm legit?

Booting off the 16GB USB recovery drive just lets me repair or reset existing installs as far as I can tell.

I've read about 2 dozen threads on this and it seems like I may have to go buy a retail Win8 license for this brand new laptop. This seems broken.

Jon

 

I am not sure what is going on but either the product key is invalid (or someone else already used it) or the 8.1 DVD has a specific product key that has to be used for it to work.

 

It's not checking with a server as the machine would have no internet connection 30 seconds into booting off the install media (no cat5 plugged in), so I don't think it's a used product key.

Am I correct that the 16GB usb recovery drive is basically useless for getting windows onto a blank drive? I thought UEFI was supposed to make windows licensing easy.

I spent $100 on OEM win8 today as a last resort,and if I end up having to use it I think this may be my last ASUS purchase for the office. This is silly.

 

Got it. I installed off a retail Win8.1 x64 disk using the generic key for the "core" version of Win8, then post-install updated my activation key with the one I'd previously extracted from the BIOS using magic jellybean.

Thanks for the help. That was the most convoluted windows install I've ever had to do. Now I hope the drivers all work fine in 8.1.

 

You can attribute it to Microsoft, not Asus. The whole OA 3.0 had (maybe has, still) everyone up in arms. I'm glad lappyman gave you some good advice! Hopefully you can enjoy that N56J now.