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I gave up on recovering my hard drive from a crash that corrupted my entire drive.

I went ahead and bought a new copy of Windows 8.

Affter I bought it, I preinstalled Window WinXP to ensure that it will go smoothly.

Installation went smoothly, and when it was done it told me to activate.

I got a valid key from my trusted hardware store, and I checked if it's the official Win8 by comparing the MD5 hashes with the ones on the Microsoft website.

What did I do wrong?

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  • With a valid copy of windows and a valid key you still have to activate windows.
    – Tarik
    Jun 14, 2015 at 0:44

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This is how Windows normally works. You're alright.
A product key is a 25-character code that's used to activate Windows. Activation helps verify that Windows hasn't been used on more PCs than the Microsoft Software License Terms allow. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows-8/what-is-product-key

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