You Can No Longer Activate New Windows 11 Builds With Windows 7 or 8 Keys (neowin.net) 84
An anonymous reader shares a report: In December 2022, we published a short PSA, reminding users they could still activate Windows 11 and 10 with valid Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 keys. This practice dates back to 2015 when Microsoft launched Windows 10 with a one-year free upgrade window. Besides letting Windows 7/8 users upgrade for free to Windows 10, Microsoft allowed activating its newest OS using keys from the previous releases.
Upgrade from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows is no longer possible, and it now seems that Microsoft is removing the loophole to prevent users from activating Windows 11 with old Windows license keys. As spotted by Deskmodder, Microsoft published a message on the Device Partner Center, notifying customers that the installation path to obtain free upgrades from Windows 7 and 8 to more recent Windows versions is no longer available. What it means is that you can no longer update from Windows 7/8/8.1 to Windows 10 or 11.
Upgrade from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows is no longer possible, and it now seems that Microsoft is removing the loophole to prevent users from activating Windows 11 with old Windows license keys. As spotted by Deskmodder, Microsoft published a message on the Device Partner Center, notifying customers that the installation path to obtain free upgrades from Windows 7 and 8 to more recent Windows versions is no longer available. What it means is that you can no longer update from Windows 7/8/8.1 to Windows 10 or 11.
Whats the point (Score:3)
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They can mostly ignore the hobbyist pirate that installs a copy or two on their gaming machines with hacked activations because they're not much revenue anyway. Running Windows un-activated these days is a fairly mild inconvenience too if you aren't big on customized colors and stuff, so that's not a huge deal either.
But, Microsoft can still make decent money on OEM licensing agreements as well as business/volume sales with accountability there should a business choose to not license their stuff. They proba
Re: Whats the point (Score:3)
At a small business level (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, that does leave one open to blackmail risks from disgruntled employees, so is it really worth it?
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If a small business engages with Microsoft at any stage where a Windows install can be detected, they will then randomly approach you to perform a SAM audit, which consists of IT filling out an Excel spreadsheet full of info. If one has no legal business relationship with Microsoft and just straight up pirates everything without using any accounts on their cloud systems, they cannot do a thing about it, as they have no legitimate means to make contact to ask for information.
Of course, that does leave one open to blackmail risks from disgruntled employees, so is it really worth it?
I doubt many small business users are upgrading their operating systems in-house, and from old OS keys. Most businesses use whatever came with their computers, and then "upgrade" only when they replace their PC's.
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For those disgruntled employees reading this, just fill out this convenient form!
https://www.siia.net/software/ [siia.net]
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They can mostly ignore the hobbyist pirate that installs a copy or two on their gaming machines with hacked activations because they're not much revenue anyway. Running Windows un-activated these days is a fairly mild inconvenience too if you aren't big on customized colors and stuff, so that's not a huge deal either.
Why would you need to use a pirated, un-activated copy when you can simply go to Google shopping and buy a key for less than 12 bucks? There seems to be loads of resellers there violating their Microsoft agreements, yet Microsoft never shuts them down ( I suspect they'd rather allow this than take a chance on truly mass piracy). It's a pain in the ass to use phone activation on some of them, but but it saves you over a hundred bucks per install, and you've got a "valid" Windows install accepted by Microsoft
Re: Whats the point (Score:2)
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Some of those keys are pretty "sus". For example, they will fail an online activation, but you then do an offline activation, copy the challenge code for the hardware, paste it in the key seller's website somewhere, get a response code, and then it is activated... but the problem with doing it that way is that upon a complete reinstall, the activation isn't preserved. The official MS activation binds the key to the BIOS ID, so when the machine is installed from scratch, it will automatically activate with
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I know the local Goodwill Computer Store used to get the codes off of donated computers and sell them. I'm sure they weren't the only ones.
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Ego. Contrary to popular belief, corporations aren't just interested in money.
Commodore went out of business more than 30 years ago, but from their point of view, you still can't use Workbench on an emulator without buying a new license for ancient encrypted ROMs. Go figure.
That's a shame! (Score:1)
I just updated Windows 11 to 23HX, and none of the bugs that have plagued it for y
Re: That's a shame! (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, no. As a former Windows user, Mint has a reasonably close approximation of Windows where you do things through a GUI. Can you use the command line? Sure, and I've done so, but for most people, things can be done through the GUI/menu system.
if you want to do anything more then just browse or type a letter.
Or edit photos, or make drawings, mix music, and, from what I keep hearing, plays games.
And no, there are also still many bugs and problems in Linux as there are in Windows
Wow. Way to insult Linux by comparing the monstrous amount of bugs and issues in Windows. At least you're admitting Windows is full of it.
and no, linux isn't safer as Windows.
And yet, the vast, overwhelming number of breaches and related safety incidents come from Windows. Either the Linux side is holding things close to the chest, or something else is going on.
Re: That's a shame! (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet, the vast, overwhelming number of breaches and related safety incidents come from Windows. Either the Linux side is holding things close to the chest, or something else is going on.
The black hat talent goes where the fat juicy targets are. iOS has an extremely hardened design philosophy and solid track record for security. It also had three zero day exploits in 2023. That's what happens when you face state sponsored hacking groups with essentially infinite budgets. If you think your favorite Linux distribution would keep you safe from such things you haven't been paying attention.
Before I get modded down, this isn't a ding on Linux. I love Linux. It was my daily driver for years on desktop and is ALL OVER my on prem and cloud environments. It's a great OS. Most everything I learned about the tech profession I owe to that first Slackware (dating myself now, lol) CD I paid $2.99 S/H to get in the 1990s.
You're just focusing on the wrong things if you think the Operating System is the problem. Microsoft has had plenty of issues but Windows is "secure enough" out of the box these days, no more or less than macOS or Linux, and there are well documented hardening steps you can take to secure it further. For the average sys admin, not facing state sponsored threats, your biggest worry these days is social engineering. Ask MGM. Bad guys got members of the IT team. Linux won't save you if your IT team gets socially engineered into giving up root access.
Or, at the risk of bringing up politics, ask Hillary Clinton. It wasn't some cool zero day exploit that exposed her campaign manager's e-mails [wikipedia.org]. It was a fucking spear pfish and a lazy IT person who chose to handle the reported pfish (the user did the right thing) by responding via e-mail. I would have gotten out of my chair and walked over to handle that one in person. I would do that for any one of my users, none of whom have the fat target on their back John Podesta did. If they were remote I'd pick up the phone and call them. Immediately. And I'd shut off their account if they didn't answer. Instead that dude chose to respond via an e-mail he didn't even proof read. The rest is history.
Re: That's a shame! (Score:4, Informative)
What about the notifications that are completely broken? What about the time system that's broken? What about the WSL being locked off from disk access? Windows 11 is a toy that was built to serve ads and dumb widgets to users, it's not professional, and it can't be used in a professional capacity for real work.
There's a reason the saying: "Windows is for people who pretend to do work, Linux is for people who have to do work.” sings when you look at Windows 11. I wouldn't pay 1 cent for Windows 11.
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and it can't be used in a professional capacity for real work
Yeah, that's nonsense. I have close to 150 Windows users in my environment, roughly 2/3rds on 11, and zero issues with the transition other than the usual "My muscle memory is wrong and needs retraining" complaints that go away within a week of being upgraded (I get the same gripes from macOS people after significant updates)
It's not an earth-shattering update, Microsoft would've been more honest to call it Windows 10.1, but whatever, that's marketing.
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None of those things are issues in my environment. You can repeat them until the cows come home but they are not problems here. They were not problems in my MSP days when I was the sole Tier 3 escalation contact for >1000 endpoints, roughly one third to half of those being on 11. I can't find consistent griping doing Google searches for them, just the normal break/fix stuff. I have a mix of ~60/30/10% remote/hybrid/local users, all in Intune/Azure AD, and for the most part it just works. The biggest
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The time issue, is that I have to manually toggle the “Set Time Automatically” button off and back on, for the time to update correctly. The reason that's an issue is that Windows knows I want the time to automatically update, and it can do it, but just doesn't, for no reason. I've had Microsoft look into this on calls with them, and they won't expl
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No offense homie but your gripe sounds like end-user out of his depth complaining about eminently solvable problems, not IT Professional facing systemic issues due to buggy operating system. I have not personally experienced the behavior you describe, with managed or unmanaged Windows 11 machines, that said, read up on w32tm [microsoft.com], configure it for the NTP Pool, and move on with your life. This problem is solvable in under 90 seconds.
If you have Intune you can push the configuration too. Device Configurations
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Hahahaha, I gave you a 90 second fix for one of your problems and your solution is to continue to whine?
it's a hindrance to a straight forward work flow
Says you. Not one of my Windows users would find Fedora easier. That's not a knock on Fedora, if it works for you Godspeed, but you might consider that your perspective is not the mainstream one. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people are perfectly productive on Windows 11.
I'm not going to edit or modify the time system on Windows, because Windows is broken. Either Microsoft can open license and the code, or they can do the work.
So your expectation of any closed source software is that it come completely configured out of the box for your unique use ca
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This is not an isolated set of problem. My boss has the same ones I have, one co-worker has them, another has different issues, but hers I honestly believe are user error. I know a good handful of pe
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You glossed past my MSP experience where I had an even larger number of endpoints/users on 11 without issue. There's nothing edge case about my environment, my company is education adjacent, and my Windows users run the gamut from video editors to accountants to C-suite to customer service to graphics designers, with tech backgrounds ranging between "Can barely use a landline phone" and "Doctorate in Computer Science"
I don't discount your experience but you should not be assuming it means hundreds of mill
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I'm sorry, but your dual boot RTC scenario is so far outside the norm that it boggles my mind you unironically write it immediately after complaining they won't open the code stack to get to the bottom of a 1 in 1,000 scenario (more like 1 in 10,000 but whatever). You're willing to dive into the 50 million plus lines of code that is Windows but not willing to make a quick registry edit?
This problem is easy to fix, I found a guide in one google search [howtogeek.com], it's for Windows 10 but I'd be shocked if the registry
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Windows is NOT working with the time system correctly, you'll never get around this, if the toggle “set time automatically” is on, then without question or interaction from me, the time better be bleeping set automatically. The claim that it's failing correct, is nonsense, if the functionality doesn't work remove it.
I'm also not getting off my argument to open the code and the
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Have a good weekend I suppose. I would encourage you to read some NTP white papers. For one, I’m a time nerd and it's just cool, but for two, Windows really is behaving the way it should. I think you'd come to realize if that if you learned more about the implementation and history of the protocol. We agree on more than you think, FWIW, and I wish you well.
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The latency issue alone is enough to make Windows 11 unusable. The notification problems, the time system problem, usable, hell even the interface is terrible, and IMHO enough to disqualify it. If you have 150 Windows users, you either have 150 clueless users, or, you have 150 users who don't care about productivity. Windows 11 is a toy, it's designed for clueless users who want to be served ads, widgets and tracked within an inch of their lives, to act like they're getting work done.
I think you're letting your hatred both cloud your judgment and make your arguments entirely counterproductive. Please understand - I use Linux almost exclusively, I haven't used Windows except casually on other folks' computers in about 15 years, I can't stand Windows, and I despise Microsoft. So when it's somebody in my position telling you that you're waaaaay over the top, maybe it's time to take a deep breath, have a beer, and calm yourself down.
My wife uses Windows - she has no choice. And she's produc
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Try using an OS install that suffers from a massive, crippling latency issue. If 99.9% of 11 users don't experience this, that still means 1 in 1000 do, or 1000 people in a million do. That's enough of a threshold to make it a serious issue, and I've experience this problem since 11 released. If someone is doing 1/2 the work in the same time, because their OS prevents them from doing the other 1/2, I would say that's pretending to work. When you have better
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Great let me know when linux lets me run commercial CAD packages.
Re: That's a shame! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Windows meanwhile have added the unix command line. I actually do some Windows stuff now from the command line, and without knowing how to use the cryptoquiz that is powershell.
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This is true. However at the office you usually don't get a choice. I'd like the Linux with Windows as a VM, but the IT demands conformance to Microsoft.
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Let me amend that. IT doesn't officially allow Windows 11 yet, I'm using WSL on W10. However with new laptops through IT they're preloaded with Windows 11, but I can't upgrade. And I kind of due want to upgrade because I have both WSL2 to be fast for builds, but WSL1 because I also need IPv6, serial ports, etc, and W11 improves on this a bit. But it has a horrendous UI and even the Pro/Enterprise editions are dumbed down.
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Browsing and typing letters, spreadsheets, and email is 90% of everything. Add in playing music and downloading pictures and you are done.
I don't edit videos, so I don't know how it works for that, but everything I do is on a linux box.
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Re: That's a shame! (Score:4, Interesting)
DaVinci Resolve Studio is a professional grade video editor that's increasingly popular as an alternative to Premier, which, for Windows users, is widely seen as unstable.
Resolve runs on Linux as well as Macs and Windows. It's notable for ease of color grading and being able to invoke one or multiple GPUs during editing workflows, often in a more substantial way that Premier can. Both Premier and Resolve have a certain amount of interesting AI functionality, but Resolve Studio is a $350 one time purchase, not-Studio Resolve is completely free and Premier is something like $60/month from now until the end of time.
Video editing is a place where Linux definitely has a legitimate use case.
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As least there's a high level of consistency there. Unlike Windows, where they move configuration stuff around all the time, apparently just because they can.
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Consistency, seriously? If I want to set static ip address, do i need to edit /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/dhcpcd.conf or maybe /etc/sysconfig/network? Shall I use networkmanager or wicked?
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linux still has a problem with having to do too much via the commandline,
When searching for solutions to Windows issues, I increasingly see instructions that require use of Powershell.
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Or registry editing. I there's regedit so finding "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation" and adding RealTimeIsUniversal=1 is technically using a GUI to change a setting.
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Agreed on the licensing front. Desktop should be free and that would drive demand for the servers and online services that it can link with.
Looking the other way while students and geeks pirated was a decent part of how Windows came to dominate.
I continue with my migration to Linux, though. And it's not about the money, it's about how MS treats the users of it's OSes... with thinly veiled contempt. But it's also about the money.
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But if you have Windows 7 or 8, then Windows 10 or 11 are worth paying for, at least if you want to stay legal.
For the simple reason that old Windows versions are not supported anymore. And Linux is far from a drop in replacement.
What is not worth paying for is Windows 11 when you have Windows 10, but that one is free. In other word and unsurprisingly, Windows 11 is free when you don't need it.
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You have no idea how much money MS collects from annual software licenses from corporate/educational/government, it is a HUGE pile of money.
The sale of Windows licenses to OEMs is another huge pile of money (money per computer built w/ windows 11 installed).
The retail sale of Windows licenses is not a significant revenue generator (home system builders keep migrating their product keys from old builds to new builds in my experieince).
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I haven't had to, but I'm fairly sure you can download a Windows ISO from MS with a key.
Why you'd do that and not get something with a proper package manager and office suite like Debian and LibreOffice I don't know.
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> over multiple layers and install them all at once as dnf does
You'd have to define what you mean by that, as that could be treated as snapshot transaction like, so that all changes appear at once. I don't believe dnf or apt do this.
Dependency problems are zero as far as I'm concerned, I've been running bullseye/bookworm and bookworm/trixie without issue.
As far as refugees goes, Ubuntu is probably the sane choice for someone who want's a corporation at the other end.
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That sounds like all package managers. dpkg will let you do the insane things like extracting packages with unmet dependencies, but apt has always been pretty good at managing the package dependency tree.
Upstream in debian QA packages will not migrate from unstable into testing if they break dependency trees so end users don't end up in problematic situations if they're on testing/stable.
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I found the upgrade useful, because I had a Pro license with Windows 8. Buy the new computer wiht W11 pre-installed with the "screw you Home Users" edition, I just upgraded it in-place with the old license.
While not worth paying for, the older Windows versions are declared persona non-grata already by Microsoft - the kicked the kids out of the house and rented out their rooms to hobos. So unless you can go full Linux or MacOS (which is getting worse every year in their attempt to copy Microsoft), or you d
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I used to run Windows 11 in a VM, but that stopped working due to the massive number of graphical problems I kept running into, so I'm forced to run it on bare metal. All that being said, I still maintain, and will keep maintaining Windows 11 is not for professionals.
About time (Score:2)
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But (Score:2)
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You can deactivate retail copies of Windows OS and re-use the retail Product Key to install Win 11 on a different system.
OEM Product Keys may be able to be transferred to a new computer, I'm just not sure - I think I remember hearing some people had done it, but it's been a long time.
It has been this way for decades, this is nothing new - the new portion is the ability to use older product keys for newer versions of windows (in other words, you could always transfer a retail Win 7 product key from one syste
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In theory OEM product keys are tied to the machine they were sold with. Microsoft defines the machine as the motherboard, so you can replace everything else and keep using that licence.
In practice, you can activate OEM keys on other machines, or swap your mobo. When activating it might ask you some questions about how many copies you have installed, but it will let you do it in the end.
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I'm done with Microsoft when I can't use 10 anymore. 11 is *way* too intrusive.
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Microsoft themselves are way too intrusive; 11 is just a symptom of that =/
Correction - Still Can Activate Win 11 w/Win 7 Key (Score:2)
I literally activated Win 11 Pro on a re-purposed thin client laptop (Dell Wyse 5470) with a Windows 7 Ultimate Product Key a friend of mine gave me.
This worked at 5:00 CST on Sept 28th the thin client had NO pre-installed Windows OS with a no windows product key.
It is in Microsoft's interest to enable as many windows users to run Win 11/Current Windows, and repurposing old Win 7/8/8.1/10 to activate Win 11 is an easy way to accomplish that.
MS (at least used to) offer free Windows product keys/activations f
Oh no (Score:2)
Anyway
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> You are basically the Windows equivalent of an anti-vaxxer
You sound overdue for your booster.
The reverse would be more useful. (Score:1)
Running 10, much less 11, on hardware that originally shipped back when Windows 7 was still being sold, is essentially impossible anyway, regardless of licensing or activation issues. I mean, you can _install_ it, but once it's installed, all it's ever going to do is thrash the swapfile endlessly in a futile attempt to get caught up on updates. You can't actually *use* a system like that. Simple things li
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I have a machine that was new firmly in the Windows 7 era. It even has a genuine Windows 7 license. It runs 10 no problem, but Microsoft won't let it upgrade to 11.
When can we update from Win11 to Win7? (Score:3)
I am glad Microsoft is giving up its relentless push to move people to its latest catastrophe. It's time to seize the moment and provide Windows 11 users with a way to upgrade to previous operating systems.
Maybe USA only (Score:1)
Jus installed a windows 11 for test, and activated with a new key from MSDN Windows 8 without any issues,
Fine (Score:2)
Tracking (Score:2)
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I was helping a friend set up a new computer and needed to install Windows from a USB stick. A Google search for how to do it turned up a bunch of little utilities to burn the image file. They come with handy little checkboxes to turn off things like the Live account registration and most of the spying. What a relief.
Let me know when I can buy Windows (Score:2)
As it stands now, I can give money for Windows, but I'm not able to buy it - they require a substantial amount of personal information I do not want to give them, and there is always that online association. It can't be avoided.
Total trash.