See here - use RWEverything to determine the product key and then change the key to match the one found by RWEverything: [URL]
Hello, My brother-in-law had a HD failure in his Win8 Inspiron 14z laptop. He hadn't generated the recovery DVDs. I've replaced his HD with a new one, and used the Dell Recovery DVDs I created on my daughter's 14z to restore it with the Windows 8 factory image (no user data preserved). His laptop correctly booted to the "brand new" state, and it is installing 136 windows updates now. I am worried however because although on "System" it does say that Windows is activated, the Product ID is identical to my daughter's 14z, and on the "Activation details" the 5 last characters of the Product Key shown are also the same. Is this right? I did not expect that the Dell Recovery DVDs would carry the Product key; I assumed Windows would fetch it from the BIOS. Is there a way to "deactivate" Windows and make it use the BIOS key? Thanks!
Shouldn't the Windows 8 Product Key be BIOS-based on newer Dell laptops?