[ikk157]

OK thanks @ikk157.  I was unsure about that as I thought Microsoft wouldn't allow you past the installation point where it asks you for a Product Key - when you don't have one.  Possibly then there must be an option at this point where one can delay the activation?

Yeah the installation give you an option to activate windows later. The same can’t be said about the windows 10 installation however. They used to also allow that with the windows 10 installation, but they no longer do. For all we know, they might’ve taken the same approach with the windows 8.1 installation (even though i find it unlikely that they’d do that now.)

However, you can actually put in any windows product key there (preferably one for the same version you’re installing), and it won’t check if it’s valid. So you can literally look up an expired product key on google and that’ll get you through the installation process!