activate windows 8.1 with windows 8 laptop key

bird412

Reputable
Feb 1, 2015
2
0
4,510
i had a laptop that came preinstalled with windows 8. i naturally upgraded to 8.1 when it became available. about 6 months ago, this laptop quit, but the hard drive still works. I built a mid range gaming pc with a solid state drive. i already installed windows 8.1 on the ssd and its not activated, even though i tried the key from the old hdd installation. now, my question is how do i activate the copy of windows on the ssd with the key from the hdd installation? is this even possible? any help would be great

thanks,
john