While installing or upgrading to Windows 8.1 from your local drive, “Something Happened; Setup has failed to validate the product key” error message may halt your installation. Here’s an easy solution to the problem.
This type of problem mostly happens if you are installing Windows 8.1 from your hard drive which is extracted from an ISO file that is downloaded or installing from USB thumb drive without boot. Installing Windows 8.1 from local drive by clicking on setup.exe (without boot) should not make any problem to 8.1 unless you done any wrong.
How to Fix Setup has failed to validate the Product key Problem
Step 1: Download the modified EI.CFG file (1KB) from http://goo.gl/8z8jJR. Both pro and enterprise edition files are included.
Step 2: Now locate the folder “sources” on USB-stick or the folder where you extracted the ISO image (windows ISO extracted files and folders should look like following).
Step 3: Paste the newly downloaded ei.cfg file in “sources” folder. Replace the old file (you may take a backup of the old file).
Step 4: Done! Now you can install and upgrade to Windows 8.1 by clicking on that blue setup.exe without facing the product key validation error.
Tell us if it worked.
View Comments (134)
Been trying for days to install windows 8.1. Thank you for posting this, I was finally able to install windows 8.1.
Glad to know you did it :)
Thank you very much!
Welcome David :)
thank u man it's really working
thanks a lot it works
Wow! Worked like charm
works
thank u very very much
Does not work.
Exactly the same as before.
Without 'ei.cfg', it prompts for a new key.
With it, it just fails the 8.0 key.
Waste of time!
It worked for all but not yours. Can you tell me what you exactly did?
workout ... thank a lot
This post is about windows 8.1 and not for Windows 8.0 i hope it does the same on windows 8.0
But in Windows 8.1 it worked for all of us... :)
Have a look in the downloaded file ei.cfg
open it with notepad++
you will see under [EditionID] it states "professional"
capitalise it so it states "Professional"
sorted, just an issue of case sensitivity
Thanks Danial. Gonna fix it!
VLW
SO BR MEMO
It Works Thanks a lot
i need Windows 8.1 cuz my bios is designed for win 8.1
It works for me,thank you!