this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
73 points (95.1% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

54443 readers
1128 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hello people I have recently changed my CPU, Motherboard and RAMs so I was planning on reinstalling windows on my PC. Last time I installed Windows was probably or so 10 years ago and I can't remember for the life of me how I activated it.

Any recommendations on activating the new install? Or is it too much trouble nowadays and should I just buy a key?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh man, MAS is quite a rabbit hole. It basically tricks Microsoft's server to give out valid windows license.

How does it work?

In the official upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10, Microsoft provides an HWID (digital license) activation for Windows 10 without any cost.

In the background, the upgrade process runs a file named gatherosstate.exe (available in Windows 10/11 ISO) and it checks the license of current Windows if found activated, it generates a valid GenuineTicket.xml ticket which is sent to Microsoft and in return, MS authorizes a license.

So if we just convince the gatherosstate.exe file that the conditions are met for ticket generation by fooling it, it will generate a valid ticket, which can be used to get the valid HWID (Digital license).

The fact that this tool is hosted in a Microsoft-owned website (GitHub) is crazy, lol.

[–] yoichi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

It's been proven over and over again that Microsoft simply does not care for individual consumers anymore. I mean, you can use any Microsoft Windows installation without activating for perpetuity and the only issue would be no customisation of the wallpaper and that pesky notice on the bottom right.

The money from Enterprise is enough to justify it

[–] Aux@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Microsoft never cared.