Hmm, this shouldn’t affect me, as my Win 7 Pro key is now a Win 10 Pro key, right?
If you already activated it once with 10 Pro, then yes, you can freely use it beyond the cut-off date.
I have around 30 windows 7 pro COAs (used to work in a pc repair shop, pulled the COAs on every dead pc that came through). Most of them are from dells, but I haven’t had an issue activating on custom pcs. If anyone wants one, let me know
I’d like one too if you have a spare
DM’d you too
I’d love one if you have a spare! Thanks so much
DM’d you
Can i get one? Upgraded my PC and windows wont accept my old code, been running without activation for a while lol
DM’d you
If you’re handing out free keys, I’d happily take one! Pretty smart to yoink em from scrapped PCs lol
DM’d you
Can I have 3?
Best limit it to one to share the love - DM’d you
Ty!
It had to happen eventually. To be honest I’m surprised Microsoft still charges for Windows when Apple, Google Chrome OS and Linux offers their systems for free.
In my case I run Windows 10 in a VM on my Linux machine just to use the Canon printer which the box said supported Linux but after I bought it, their website says they no longer support Linux.
So I’m forced to use Windows.
Btw, if you use Linux ain’t buy a Canon printer. If you can, get Brother.
tbh I wish they’d charge for their OS and they would charge a little more instead of filling it with bullshit and privacy nightmares that I (and probably no one) wants. I don’t main on Windows, but goddamn is it annoying when I do update having to get rid of some new bullshit every single time.
It’s also a bit funny because used to be you bought a new key for each OS version. This could be a positive for Windows, but they bungled it because they decided Windows 10 was going to be the “last” version of Windows, until they didn’t.
If they used to, find the ppd or one from the series models.
I wish we could just get back to an updated version of 7. Everything since has sucked.
If you don’t use any software that requires Windows, you should give Kubuntu a try. I’ve found it very easy to use, as someone coming from Windows.
I had to fire up a Windows VM yesterday. Holy shit its gotten so bad. Glad I don’t need to deal with that shit on a daily basis anymore. I wish people weren’t so scared of Linux.
Scared?
Despite what Linux aficionados think, the Linux world is fractured and broken for the average person. I’ve been running dual boots or standalone linux for decades, but I still consider myself a relative beginner because I get pissed at Linux not doing what I want when I need it to and I’ll just give up trying to sort it out. Packages don’t install .make doesn’t work. .configure the same. Windows applications don’t work because Wine sucks, if it even installs correctly. Too many distros, too many versions that won’t accept apps built for previous versions, repositories disappearing and upgrade paths that aren’t intuitive. Online searches offer multiple “fixes”, but good luck. It probably doesn’t work for your distro, version, user privileges, etc. Linux for the average person sucks, and it sucks bad. Even popular ones like Ubuntu are a pain in the ass. I have all sorts of boxes running linux, from raspberry pi to Ubuntu, to Debian. The Pi’s are the best, they don’t break shit on updates or upgrade. The rest? Apt-get update is fraught with peril. I grew up with command line work, I still use it all the time, but I don’t have the patience to deal with trying to get Linux to do what a Windows machine does.
I’ve put countless elderly individuals like yourself onto PopOS! and they’re getting by just fine. This sounds like a you problem.
Elderly…lol. You’re funny.
So I can’t upgrade my sistem that works perfectly fine because it doesn’t meet one of their frivolous requirements. And now I can’t use the key that I legally purchased? Sounds like MS doesn’t want me to use their products.
They don’t want you, because they only want people that will happily conform and accept the walled garden they are slowly building towards
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You guys are using keys?
My first legit Windows Version I installed(not pre-installed) was when my university gave keys out for free.
Before that I used sketchy tools to activate my Windows. Since I am using Linux only my vms don’t get activated. Windows 10 runs fine without activation.
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Nope. On all of my machines I installed Windows 10 using an official usb boot disk with a distro straight from Microsoft. It was 100% free, I didn’t need an account, and I’m not being prompted to activate, nor do I have the annoying little watermark in the bottom right of my screen.
I seriously don’t understand how people are paying to use Windows when Microsoft gives it away for free.
Were those OEM machines? Often times OEM computers will come with a Windows OS license during purchase and I think Windows may check the hardware thumbprint of the machine and license it automatically. Windows 10/11 is certainly not free for people who build their own machine from parts.
I’ve got an unactivated VM I abuse as a server that’s been running for half a year now, no idea what you are talking about
windows…as a server…?
Space Engineers has no Linux Dedicated Server so I’m forced to run a Windows VM. It’s the only piece of software I’ve encountered that problem with and it boggles my mind why they chose to do that
The same reason I set up a windows vm yesterday.
Space Engineers. There are dockers for it but since Single Player on Linux is already suffering in Performance I don’t think the server in docker on wine will perform better.
And I used a Windows Image that I used for personal installs and never had the issue that it shutdown unactivated. Some settings aren’t available though. Nothing usually you need.
Getting Space Engineers to run on Linux is a constant experience of “Ooohh, it works. Now don’t touch anything or it’ll break!”. There are some docker containers out there that seem to work but then I’d lose the advantage of Torch and I’m not about to do that.
Really hope they provide a Linux Server for Space Engineers 2 (I assume that is what they will work on once Vrage3 is done)
ah, i assumed a web server. it’s ok for game servers i guess
He’s actually partly correct. VMs of Windows 10 or 11 are supposed to shut down hourly if not activated. It’s been present since Windows 10 released.
Here’s a reference in case you need one: https://superuser.com/questions/933754/why-does-windows-10-shut-down-hourly-with-initiated-power-off-on-behalf-of-nt-a
You either have the registry key unset, or are experiencing a bug of the software protection mechanism.
I’ve got an entire set of windows test VMs running unactivated for about 4 years now. We have a few at work too (we actually have keys for those but nobody has bothered putting them in).
The worst that happens is you can’t set a desktop background.
What you’re describing is for bare metal Windows Server only or all editions in a VM. And that’s on purpose. You can probably guess why. Windows Home through Enterprise will run indefinitely on bare metal. It just locks down personalisation. Microsoft explicitly offers a VHD of Windows that doesn’t require activation.
that applies to vm images only
I finally ran out windows 7 keys and had to buy a new one for win11, they cost 4-9$ online.
Yeah, volume keys are what I’ve been using the past ten years or so. Only one office key got blacklisted so far. Overall a pretty good deal.
Where?
i randomly picked a shady website i found by searching “windows 11 pro license key purchase”
I’ve been able to get them off ebay before for windows 10 keys. Got a pro key for 6 dollars I believe.
KeysOff has been very reliable for me in the past (I’m not affiliated with them, just a happy customer) but I’m pretty sure there are multiple VLK resellers out there for Windows keys at this point.
Go to Amazon UK, bunch of really cheap ones there. You’ll get the key via email instantly. Ideally, install a fresh windows 10 and immediately upgrade to 11, then the key will be upgraded and remains valid even if the original one gets disabled.
r/MicrosoftSoftwareSwap sells them but mine stopped working and the dude who sold it to me didn’t answer. So don’t go there.
Not like I wanted to, my older PCs running windows 7 aren’t eligible for Windows 11 anyway
It’s because of the TPM shit but there are ways to bypass that in the installer. There’s not that much difference in the architecture of Windows 7 v.s Windows 11, and there is theoretically nothing stopping a Win7 machine from running Win11. It’s all the same since Vista anyway. That was the last major architecture revamp.
Try installing fresh from USB. Typically works for me on any machine that says it couldn’t install on
Wym man I pacman -Syu 20 times a day with no problem. You guys need keys?
You guys need keys?
Yeah, sometimes if I haven’t booted up my laptop in a while, I’ll run pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring to get the keys I need.
Haven’t happened to me yet. I’ll keep this in mind. My arch devices are constantly in use.
On 10 right now, but honestly have had enough of the whole Windows ecosystem. (Like today I ran across a look at these exciting Windows 11 September updates! woo! aren’t you excited! video, and it was almost all embarrassingly cosmetic. Except for the part where they’re finally adding native support for archive formats (.7z, .rar, .tar) that everyone else has supported for decades: how fucking charming am I supposed to find that announcement after all these years of using 3rd party apps, when the probability of the native support being buggy as hell is very high? And that was just one example; there’s a full list in the description box.
No thanks. It’s clear they did all this just to be able to simultaneously slather AI hooks all through the OS works, free for now but not forever, and I’m just not interested in that either. Nothing against AI, I just don’t want it integrated into my OS. I also like my privacy, believe in keeping my own shit on my own computers, and enjoy not having a significant portion of my hardware computing load dedicated to the collection and sale of my data.
But MS isn’t the only game in town anymore. I tried some hardware-light Linux distros on a 13 year old MacBook recently just to see what the fuss is about, and was gobsmacked at how well they ran with 4GB of RAM and a slow (by today’s standards) processor. Holy shit. So I did a bit of hardware upgrading so I could run even more, and yesterday I installed Fedora 38 with KDE Plasma on that same MacBook with 16GB of RAM and a 1T SSD. It picked up every bit of that hardware on its own, too; I didn’t have to configure a thing.
It’s almost too easy, lol. It’s Linux so I thought I was going to be overwhelmed with command line shit, but no, not at all: the few times I needed the command line, the exact syntax was a web search away, with plentiful discussion, documentation, and even demo videos to choose from.
And if I don’t like it, I can try as many as I like off USB drives until I see something I like and decide to install that instead, and there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of distros now.
So Microsoft can keep that AI-ridden ad-ware Windows 11 shit. I’ll keep 10 for now (installed on a 7 license, lol) until I’m fully comfortable with Linux, and then that’s that.
Put it this way. I now have a screaming fast machine that runs on 13-year-old hardware where every software I could want for it is free, open source, and backed by a gazillion gurus both pro and amateur for whom no question is too arcane; why the hell should I give that up for the baggy, bloated, slow, privacy-invasive advertising delivery service that is Microsoft Windows?
I know there will be issues with Linux as I get to know it and use it, just because there are issues with every OS. There may even be things I find I can’t get past, and if that happens I try other distros or suck it up, lol. But fuck MS if they think I am going to pay actual cash to help them serve up my privacy while they deliver unwanted ads to me every time I boot it up.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk, lol.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Activate Linux
Activate Linux
Ahemm… MAS
MAS is directly affected by this and doesn’t work anymore.
On their GitHub it looks like they’re looking for a way around it.
Hmm… interesting, I haven’t used MAS for a while because I have windows 7 OEM key stuck with my MS account I wonder if it won’t work anymore but I’m still rocking win10 anyway
