Note that although I believe the XP activation servers have shut down, the private key for the product key itself was cracked long ago, shortly after the document in this article, but the scene kept that development pretty quiet for a while. Relevant reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35993044
OEM licenses can be kind of funny. They aren’t portable, though I would’ve thought that the motherboard was replaced by a motherboard by the same OEM, etc. and should’ve qualified to use that OEM’s license.
It does, or at least it used to. Back during the Vista days my copy of Windows failed to activate after I replaced the motherboard, but Microsoft support was happy to help me when I explained that it was the same computer with new parts in it.
This has never happened to me even after replacing every component of my computer over the years (other than the PSU). I imagine signing in (and setting up the computer) with a microsoft account is what makes it stronger.
It happened to me on a brand new PC (MSI Z790 motherboard) when I updated the BIOS, with a brand new Windows 11 license purchased from the MS store. It looked like the BIOS update was clearing fTPM keys or something. I ended up hitting my activation limit and had to call in and spend 1.5 hours speaking to various levels of escalation, uploading various invoices as proof of purchase, and then eventually they issued me an alternative product key which has worked ever since.
Sometime in the last several years, it became possible to download a windows .iso from microsoft.com and use it in a VM ~forever without activating. (I don’t know the precise timing because I switched to linux in 2018)
Does anyone remember when this shift happened, and what was the justification? Has Microsoft given up on making money on end-user windows licenses, relying instead on OEM licenses and monetizing users with shitty ads?
I know what you're referring to - I think other posters are confusing this with other initiatives Microsoft has like the VMs for web dev or preview releases.
In Windows XP, if the system wasn't activated after the initial grace period, you couldn't log in at all. That was obviously a bad UX when something has gone wrong.
Windows Vista and Windows 7 loosened things - allowing you to log in and use basic functionality.
Later versions of Windows (including Windows 10 and Windows 11) are more or less fully functional without activation (or even inputting a product key). Some personalisation features are disabled and you will have a watermark on the desktop, but other than that it's pretty normal. There is no time limit for this, unlike some of the free virtual machine images Microsoft provides for web dev testing purposes.
The only justification I can see is that it does provide a better user experience if there's an activation problem. With Windows 10 and 11 being free upgrades for a huge range of consumers, they know that most people have a licence anyway.
Windows 10 and 11 have also emphasised the digital licence model - installing without a product key. This requires that the system is functional without activation, so that you can get online to verify the digital licence.
It's not recent. Piracy has been a promotional channel for Windows for a long time.
When you use Windows, you don't use the alternatives, don't consider the alternatives, and don't change your habits, which makes one even more inclined to stick to Windows. That's why Microsoft is careful to not make it too hard to acquire a copy of Windows. (On the other hand, it makes it hard for hardware makers to offer anything else, and for businesses to switch or elude.) A regular user doesn't care about the OS anyway, and would follow any shepherd. As a wrapper to run browser and multimedia player, Linux was ready for desktop long ago — see famous anti-Linux stunts at Microsoft.
Moreover, the leaders today don't profit from software, they profit from data collection and control over their “free” services. The bigger the user numbers, the more money you can get, and when Windows activation can be done by typing some commands on a vanilla system, it is effectively “free” for everyone who wants to take it.
everyone can download windows 11 today, install, and never even activate.
you will see "not activated" or something on the bottom right. and you cannot change theme (you can still change it before you go online the first time, or via registry)
The average user probably isn't reinstalling their OS anyways. They don't even really have to rely on this method anymore because I was born in 2008 and grew up with Windows. It actually kind of blew my mind when I realized all *nixes were case sensitive and that they didn't have the dir and cd commands by default, all I knew was how Windows did things and I'm still pretty used to it, as much as I wish I could trust it more but I've tried to lock down my main version (LTSC IoT 2021) as much as possible from MS data collection.
nixes do actually have a cd command. I see your point though, I think the reason I'm on Linux now (well, currently macOS actually) is that I've switched way back in middle school or so.
Still, I think Windows nowadays is hostile towards both nix and old-time Windows users. I kinda wish ReactOS was more active so that people who are tied to Windows ecosystem have some sane alternative.
It started as part of the modern.ie project, which would distribute Windows VMs to the primarily Mac using web developers at the time so they could test against Internet Explorer, countering the trend of just telling people to switch to Chrome if they complained about broken functionality.
The VMs were time locked I believe and would shut down after a few hours (at least the more recent ones do).
Considering all the data collection and dark patterns in Windows, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more lucrative this way.
By the way, the thing you mention isn’t just for VMs, you can download Windows from Microsoft and install it on bare metal, having it run indefinitely as long as you’re OK with a watermark on the bottom right.
Windows licensing don't always require individual license keys, and they just let you pass sometimes for some hardware configurations and sometimes using BIOS-provided keys.
I guess it's working as intended since it only refused to work with me in weird cases, and other times it was tolerable annoyances at time.
> Running windows on bare metal still requires you to pay for it
In the license yes, technically unlicensed windows actually works but you can’t e.g. change the desktop wallpaper. Kind of the same principle applies to the dev vm: it works fine (during its validity period) but it is not licensed for production use.
A quick google search reveals that no, Microsoft has not given up on making money on Windows - it generates billions of dollars of revenue. I don't know what you're referring to with the .ISO - I have never heard of this.
Well, this is terrifyingly/depressingly presently relevant :(. I literally, at this instant, switched over to HN to kill time waiting for stuff to slowly download after merely trying to open up a Windows 11 VM under Parallels I made a few months ago for a friend to let them run an old copy of QuickBooks for Windows on his Mac. I have a valid W11 Pro key, everything installed and activated fine back then. Zero changes since. Fire it up, and whoops, Activation Error! Absolutely everything about this entire process with all 3 companies involved is total shit. To start I had to figure out how to even quit Edge which had zero clear way to close it and none of the old alt-F4 or whatever I remembered worked. Then onwards to activation to save us from those evil pirates who have zero of these problems ever. On the Windows side it just gave a cryptic 0xC004F213, so click "Troubleshooting" and it does nothing except "invalid buy a new copy, or contact support". Then close reload and now it gives 0x803fa067, but same thing. So contact support. After wading through tree they say to click the button to contact support, or sign in. You can click the button all you want, does nothing. So sign in. Ok now it lets you give a phone #, and says they'll call you? Two hours later, nothing. No acknowledgement, maybe it'll call tomorrow or something. OK maybe just forget this and buy a new copy of Quickbooks Desktop for Mac. Oh, they've discontinued that. Cloud only. Wait maybe there's a subscription, somewhere. But no they REALLY want you in their cloud subscription and while there are hints it exists I gave up after 30 minutes, probably have to call support. Old standalone copies cannot be had. Try reinstalling with Parallels, bugs out with weird errors, also wants to install all this other random crap. And on and on. So going to try with VMware Fusion, though of course that was just bought by Broadcom and probably will be discontinued, left to rot, or turned into a subscription (and then left to rot). This is all on 8/2.5 ADSL because this is rural northern New England and there isn't even cable with 5 miles of here.
Sigh. Remember when you could just pay companies money for a product, and get something that they at least kinda tried to have be ok, and then buy an upgrade if you thought they'd delivered enough value, or not if not, and on your own schedule? And maybe just enter a serial number you'd got and that was it, no internet needed? Good times!
I went to go look at what the GSA and feds do for QB and ran into something new to me. Many companies that license software will offer terms for a special contract and perpetual licensing.
But then in the new order[0] “recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicates that agencies buy and manage software licenses in a decentralized manner, struggle to create accurate inventories, often purchase unneeded capabilities, and generally do not facilitate better purchasing by sharing pricing or terms and conditions across the Government. Furthermore, most agencies do not have a designated central oversight authority to manage software agreements. This memorandum addresses these and other challenges in information technology
And
“ Enterprise Software Category Team (ESCT),6 co-managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), the Department of Defense (DoD), and OMB, will
guide the development of Government-wide software license agreements for mandatory agency use, and OMB will encourage or direct use of best-in-class existing software licensing
agreements. This memorandum further requires agencies to develop implementation plans, in accordance with ESCT guidance, to address how agencies will move from their existing agreements to those mandated by the ESCT. Agencies must also justify and obtain ESCT approval to pursue new agreements that overlap or conflict with the ESCT mandated agreements.”
It goes on.
Perpetual licenses are a good idea to have as an option because the company or product might disappear, or in some cases, as I have seen, a company will refuse to sell a licensed version of something for less than benevolent reasons.
We can all appreciate the efficiency of adding more bureaucracy and lawyers (general counsel) and layers of managers (the various committees you now have to wrangle into agreement).
It occurred to me though that part of the utility of small group acquisitions is that different organizations can buy what they need or want when they decide to without this mess, and the licensing can be arranged to suit the need of that organization. I think this also damages the small seller or company that makes niche programs. Perhaps my business gets contracts from small specialized government teams and groups because it’s a better option for them than the Microsoft sized competition, and now they have to deal with the additional mess of justifying this purchase in addition to being on the same contract terms and volume purchase agreements with the Microsoft sized companies as say the entire IRS.
So, my quickbooks compatible software for managing and displaying old versions’ files used by a dozen people in Navy purchasing is at odds with a license from quickbooks used by IRS to allow examiners access to older versions. My income becomes maintenance fees to QB. (This is hypothetical)
Thank you for the suggestion, I'm perfectly willing to take any approach, plus looks fun to watch while chipping away at this :). I'm just a bit taken aback is all. People talk about "enshittification" recently, and really what's old is new again, I can see why it's considered a cycle. Companies get more and more extreme, people get fed up, resort of alternative measures, competition pushes a rebalance, then it starts to drift again. But it is frustrating, and I guess there is always the fear that advancing hardware control will mean one day they'll be able to really turn the screws in a way harder to escape from. I wish governments would get to the heart of the matter and mandate that people must always have the option for control over the root key store of any hardware they own.
What's the oldest copy of Windows I can get a new key for today? If I had one for W7 or W8 yeah I'd use it, but I don't. Obviously I'm going to have to start seeking out alternate solutions, undoubtedly there are plenty of spare keys to be had. Or as sibling comment suggests look into a minimal Linux install and getting it going under Wine.
But honestly mainly it comes down to that I just kinda expected it to work? I hadn't dealt with Microsoft, or Intuit for that matter, in a very long time. I think last time I did was Windows 7 era and I don't remember it being particularly bad. I sorta just thought, "well, I'll just go get a legit copy of Windows, there's a sale going on even, and it'll have good backwards compat like always and this will all be quick and easy". I mean, clearly you know better, and now I do too, and I'll figure stuff out. This isn't even remotely the most gnarly software I've needed to deal with in the past few weeks. But I didn't expect it to be this much of a PITA either. This is supposed to be a pretty easy glide path, it's not some 18 year old panoramic x-ray imaging software.
Edit:
Oh goodie, reinstalling and just discovered how stupid irritating it is to have a local account under Windows nowadays. "Cut off internet at the right time, hit shift+f10, type oobe\bypassnro, reboot, shift+f10 again, ipconfig /release, close command prompt" ok. Nice. I mean yeah, making an MS account is free, but this is just a VM and I don't want to bother and don't see why I should need to. I guess most people just go with the flow for this but geez.
the good old "it's easier to pirate" issue as usual.
sometimes being a paying customer is undesirable for the company so you just get bad service. it's the same with media if you don't want to just consume the latest mass distributed garbage.
you obviously won't get sued for running old software at your home. so why bother having more trouble to pay when you're clearly not a desired customer.
it's like entering a store and insisting to pay for the free samples and annoying everyone.
Three of the four aforementioned distros all offer first class KDE variants. Fedora KDE is considered one of the best KDE distros. Or you can recommend OpenSuse, Kubuntu, etc for an even simpler out of box experience.
Jumping to Manjaro/Arch as a first is a terrible idea, and more likely to frustrate new users away from Linux.
i disagree. linux is a learning experience in itself. just don't tell people to fdisk disk alone right from the beginning. but that's the beauty of rolling distros. help them once and mostly forget :)
you accept software is not eternal and bugs are there. instead of accepting blue screens/spinning beachball/etc as facts of life, you understand they are like idiot lights on your car dashboard. instead of ignoring you take your car to a mechanic, who will tell you something obvious had you read the manual.
Linux is the same. you see a crash, you message the friend who told you to use Linux or google the error. yeah, it's annoying, but only if you live in neverland were comercial software have no bugs.
and again, ubuntu/rh/etc does nothing but try to push this lie to opensource.
Don't rephrase me to suit your narrative/argument. What kind of garbage person does that?
I said:
> more likely to frustrate new users away from Linux.
Because, as little as you may agree, most people are well aware that Arch is more complicated/advanced than the "beginner distros"; and one of the major turn-away points for Linux is it's complexity. Thus why it maintains a minuscule sliver of consumer users.
That's not me disliking Linux (I use it as my primary OS, for about 20 years now), that's just being in tune with reality.
I've been tinkering with XP-era systems a lot lately (for fun, nothing critical, don't worry) and UMSKT is a godsend. You can still activate those products with phone activation, but it's a pain in the ass compared to just keygenning with UMSKT.
In my opinion, this marks the point where Windows started its slide towards user-hostility. Things like "the file [...] is a simple RC4-encrypted database" show that the owner of the machine was being treated as an adversary. It was not much at the time (most of the system was still very open), but once you get into the mentality that the user is not an ally but an enemy, it becomes easy to justify locking it down more and more.
It may have been for Serv 2003. I don't remember much about it other than it was a Word doc explaining the entire keygen algorithm using frequency analysis; This was a big eye opener for the period.
You did still need a product key to install so a keygen might be useful. I don't know if Microsoft did anything to somehow block commonly used product keys.
I was locked out of my computer after a Windows update. I had to go into a terminal in recovery mode, change an executable to a copy of CMD.EXE, then reboot my system and use the CMD.EXE (which ran as SYSTEM, the true god behind the Administrator demiurge) to create a new user, copy all my files and folders over, then set ownership of the copied files and folders to the new user.
Anyone who tells you that Windows is great because you never have to touch the CLI is either lying, or they've only ever had trivial interactions with a Windows system.
>Windows is great because you never have to touch the CLI
Yeah, that's a good one. What I have found, coming back from Linux, is that I have to tinker about the same amount as I did in Linux, just with shittier tools, and less documented processes. My last, biggest WTF is a paired bluetooth headphone which doesn't want to actually connect, but I can't remove the pairing either, so now it's stuck in limbo. Good times.
