How To Activate Windows 8. Installation of brand new software can be quite a pain if you are a technophobe who just wants the end benefits of new software minus all of the techno mumbo-jumbo. (Read: someone who just wants to know that the car starts, and doesn't particularly care what's going on under the hood). You could live quite a comfortable life without ever having to see a command prompt. Unfortunately, using the command prompt will be a part of the activation process. (But it's nothing so major that you can't handle).