New
#81
Thanks, another thing I did not know. Perhaps I never saw an MSDM table (but I thought I did, heh) as I never bought an OEM computer (except my son's MacBook Pro retina) . Of course, when I went to do a clean install on my computer with 8.1, I would always supply the serial number (as I would write it down beforehand). I never knew about the start of the use of the hash code so I never tried skipping the serial number. Actually, I remember that on older installs, you needed to put in a serial number or it would just stop the install. Going from Windows For Workgroups 311 to Win10 has been a journey through MS's myriad product activation schemes.