Since I am leaving Microsoft I decided to reset my Surface Pro to remove everything and start over. I had moved the restore partition to a USB drive earlier so I popped it in and reset. After going through setup, I got the dialog that I needed to Activate windows. I thought maybe something went wrong with setup so I started over, rest and still, it wants me to activate.
The surface has it’s key embedded in the hardware so I guess something happened to it and it no longer worked. I called support and the first thing I did is said it was a problem with Windows 8. Of course this was a big mistake. The support person said that the key was on the box or I have to contact Staples (the place I got the Surface) to get the key. This was frustrating so I started over (again).
I contacted support for the Surface Pro which got me at least someone who knew what was going on. He could not solve my problem and said I would be contacted by the next tier of support. Again… frustrated.
Here is what I expected: If you can’t give me a key over the phone and you are going to replace my Surface Pro (which they seem to allude to doing): send me to the local Microsoft Store and let me pick it up. Instead I am stuck waiting for a call from another level of support.