How to Preserve OEM Win8 Activation when Re-Imaging Enterprise Client Systems

Anything yet? Dell customers should not be forced to rely on the additional purchase of Volume License editions of Windows to get computers re-imaged in-house.  We really need a documented process here...

Sounds like you and I are having the same exact issue. Doesnt seem to matter what image im using (retail or open license), it will not activate when I push it from usb or from the deployment share. With Windows 7 we have a script that runs and activates, but everything Im seeing about windows 8 is that it should automatically detect the license. I have a computer with the Windows 8 pro sticker and when I install windows 8 pro on it, the activation does not work.

I see your original post was back in February...any luck with this yet? 

With OEM Activation 3.0, which Dell uses, the unique product key is stored in the UEFI BIOS of the computer, so the old way of using the Dell installation key no longer works.  The mechanism to get the key is part of the Setup program, but in MDT and ConfigMan 2012, only the core image is deployed without using the setup program.  Hence there is no mechanism to retrieve, embed and activate the key from the UEFI BIOS. I have no answers yet, but I've been in contact with the Dell Enterprise Support team and they are working on it.

Not from Dell.  There are a lot of postings about this problem in the MS forums too, but as of yet, no specific solution has emerged. The official answer is to use your volume license keys, but many of our customers are not institutional so we can't use our license with them.  Manual rebuilds are labor intensive and not cost effective either.  I am strongly considering switching to another vendor since we can't get the required support from Dell.

Are you using the Dell re-installation media to build your image?  I'm told that is the proper media to use for building your image.  Capturing an image from a factory delivered system will not work.

Yes, I use the Dell media as the source files in our imaging system.  It doesn't make sense from an Enterprise perspective to have to reload systems by disc.

We use Microsoft Deployment 2012 Update 1, and need to be able to re-image Windows 8 onto our Enterprise-class systems. As I understand it, with OEM Activation 3.0 the unique product key is embedded in the BIOS and is retrieved by the setup program on the disc.   If I load a computer with the disc, it pulls the key out of the BIOS and activates itself at the proper time.  If I take the same image of the disc and make a reference image with it, it no longer activates.  What are the missing steps here?  The available documentation on this site does not address how to deal with this, so can we get some guidance on how to configure MDT12/SCCM12 to allow for normal activation?

You have to manually extract the key from BIOS

Found the instructions on how to do it here