[Qemu-discuss] Is it possible to install Windows 8 OEM as a qemu guest?

[Ottavio Caruso]

Hello,

I haven't used Qemu for a while so please forgive the newbie question.

I have a laptop with a preinstalled version of Windows 8 64 bit. I am
planning to get rid of Windows, leaving the Windows 8 OEM recovery
partition. I understand that in order to be activated, Windows 8 OEM
needs to access the Cerificate of Authority directly from the laptop
BIOS, therefore there's no way to input an activation key.

Assuming I had a Linux 64 bit host, if I mounted the recovery
partition as drive 1 and  a newly created qemu image as disk 2, would
I be able to install (that is, to activate the recovery image) onto
disk 2? Would Windows 8 work or would it not find the key?

Would it be possible for qemu/qemu-kvm to read data directly from the
hardware BIOS?

Thanks

-- 
Ottavio