This is my first post after upgrading my laptop to Windows8 RTM version freshly with the bootable ISO which was available for the MSDN subscribers. Windows8 RTM was recently released by Microsoft for the developers who have a valid MSDN Subscription and a 90days trial version as well for the public (Windows 8 RTM is available for download). Once I installed the Windows 8 RTM in the machine, I found that activating the Operating System is bit tricky, I can see that my current status is shown as Windows Not Activated yet. When I tried to activate it throws some error saying the Access to the particular folder is denied.          [more]

I was bit confused and finally got a solution to register the Product key to the New Windows8 RTM machine, which we are going to see in this blog post on how to activate the same. First go to the control panel and search for Windows Activation, where we can see option to activate the Windows8 Enterprise version or the Evaluation version. Clicking on Activate will provide an error as shown in the screen below.

So to activate it smoothly, open Command Prompt in Administrator mode (basically requires the Administrator Privileges) to execute few command scripts. In the command prompt run the below script with the Product Key which you download from the MSDN Subscription.

Script : slmgr.vbs /ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Replace the 5X5 value with the product key and execute the command as shown in the screen below.

On providing a valid Product Key we can see the Windows Product is activated online with a message as shown in the screen below.

Now go back to the Control panel and select System and Security, where we can see the Windows is Activated as shown in the screen below.