X220 new SSD - Recover Win7 after Win8 upgrade

So I bought an SSD. I installed Windows 8 Pro. I tried to activate and BAM - license key is only for upgrades. OK I say. I swap back my HDD with recovery partition. I create a recovery USB. Surprisingly it's only ~500MB on a 8GB stick. I boot it, it goes to the ThinkVantage recovery program, I select factory reset and BAM - "Cannot find the backup files".

What do I do now? I don't have a CD drive on my X220, I don't have a portable USB-SATA converter to clone my HDD (nor do I want to spend money for either). I can't get a full license exchange. My HDD has Windows 8 upgraded from Windows 7 Home Premium. I have the COA sticker and no CD's as per Microsoft's policies in the past 10 years. I can't seem to be able to create a good recovery USB with the data, only boot.

 

I just got off the phone with Lenovo tech support (nice lady at Sat. evening). They will send me free Windows 7 recovery media since I am in warranty. But I still want to know if there is another option to get my media since I'll have to look for a CD drive now.

 

Several people reported success with the following workaround for activation of Windows 8 Pro Upgrade after clean installation. While I've not done it myself, you may give it a try.

 

Well I did this, rebooted, and it said my Windows is activated listing the ending of my current key. I was able to use Windows Update. Thanks, I'll see if it gives problems in the future, hope not.

 

Yes, as mentioned in another post the above simple 2min reg edit solves the activation issue that sometimes happens if using a Win8 Upgrade key on a clean PC with no Windows OS.

On some occasions you don't even need to do the reg mod and it just accepts the upgrade key without any issues, if not this quick fix does the job. Bottom line is there seem to be no reason to buy a full retail version of Win8 Pro, the Upgrade version seems to work perfectly fine even on clean installs.