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#1
UEFI product key & OEM Windows 7 Pro SP-1
I have an annoying dilemma right now. Hopefully others here who are familiar with installing and imaging Windows for businesses have some insight on the best path to go down next.
Background
I'm wiping and installing from scratch several newer Dell Latitude E5450 laptops. They have Windows 7 Professional pre-installed with that Pro Windows 8 sticker on the bottom (ie: free upgrade to Windows 8.1). We'll, we're sticking with Windows 7 throughout my workplace. Any ways, I've done the following to methods...
- Configure one using the pre-installed OS, remove crapware, update drivers install software we use, add to domain, etc., then cloned the system via Acronis to an external drive. I then wiped three other laptops and copied this image over to them. Everything works great, I only had to change system names, IPs, and domain registration. Windows Activation took the built-in product key from the UEFI.
- Wipe another laptop (from slightly different lot with discrete NVIDIA GPU), install Windows from another CD I had laying around of the same product type (Windows 7 Professional SP-1 OEM), entered the Dell pre-install product key for Windows (the one shared by all Dell images for laptops of the same set), Windows took the key, and everything was fine, until I went to activate it. The activation said the key was invalid with an error code that relates to it already being in use. So I downloaded the RW Read & Write utility to read the embedded product key from ACPI -> MSDM. It gave me the unique embedded key. I plugged that into the Activation wizard, and instantly it rejected it. It didn't even like the first character (product key started with an "N").
So, for the latter, I assume that the product key reported by RW is for a very special OEM version of Windows 7 Professional that has the Windows 8.1 upgrade included, correct? What puzzles me is that the non-unique product key for Dell laptop images was accepted without issue during a Windows 7 Professional SP-1 OEM install. It didn't complain. But now after thinking back, I'm sure it would have complained about the unique product key starting with "N". *if this were ST2: Wrath of Khan*... Microsoft! ... Microsoft! It seems that even if we completely avoid Windows 8 crap, it still injects its ways into our lives to make things more difficult, such as this embedded UEFI key isn't backwards-compatible with the same version.
I contacted Dell and they're sending a USB key to supposedly fix the issue, but I'm not sure if this is just the key fix or a total re-installer for the burdened Windows version that's pre-installed?
Since we're switching to doing imaging for all of our systems, I'm debating on where to go next. Should I...
- Stick with Acronis or other cloning software and continue to do these new laptops the old-school way of "fat" client cloning (entire partition cloning and resizing)?
- Use WAIK or my workplace's "SysMan BuildKey" to "thin" client install on laptops (custom set of drivers, apps, settings, etc., but starting from a Windows installer)?
I ask this because this whole next edition of Windows 7 Pro OEM with 8.1 upgrade installer is the only one to have UEFI access to grab embedded product keys. And If I use that, how would I go about getting that from Dell? Or can I use the USB key Dell is sending me to scrape the installer off of it for WAIK or something else?