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Report: Microsoft kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet
- mulakosag 10mo agoI have not used windows in a while but thinking of building a PC. Is there a way to install way older version of windows 10 without Microsoft's AI nonsense and the online account requirement?
- lifetimerubyist 10mo agoI just did it today with the current ISO you can download from Microsoft themselves. Then installed all the Windows updates, graphics drivers and even enrolled in the free extended security support. Then I just uninstalled Cortana and Copilot manually. Ezpz Be warned that they employ extreme amounts of dark patterns to try and trick you into converting the offline account into an online one. Online activation of the Windows license is separate from an online user account.
- dotancohen 10mo ago> Be warned that they employ extreme amounts of dark patterns to try and trick you into converting the offline account into an online one. This would be an extremely valuable comment if you would document that.
- abound 10mo agoWere you able to enable extended security updates without logging in? I've held out for literal years, but that was the thing that finally made me log into an online user account (and start figuring out how to finally cut the last bit of Windows out of my life)
- wmf 10mo agoJust pirate the updates with Massgrave.
- robinsonb5 10mo agoWere you able to use the online activation system without a Microsoft account? I wasn't able to - though as you say, that account doesn't have to be tied to the license or an account on the machine being activated.
- CamperBob2 10mo agoLook into LTSC, and the resources at https://massgrave.dev/ https://massgrave.dev/ . Disclaimer: I have no personal knowledge of that site, but it is commonly recommended when this subject comes up.
- q3k 10mo agoI've heard that it is a way to reliably but potentially illegally activate MSFT products. Stay away.
- kristofferR 10mo agoNah, it's been hosted by Microsoft for years, on Github for a decade, without as much as a takedown notice, 161k stars now, they don't mind. https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts If they wanted it removed from GitHub they would have done so.
- nixass 10mo agoHot take but legality is completely irrelevant for home use
- 9x39 10mo agoIf you're a midsize business with revenue, theoretically one of their enforcement partners may take a run at you, but this is not a thing with home users (or even most small business abuse).
- shepherdjerred 10mo agoI'd feel bad only if there were a legitimate way to acquire the LTSC for home use
- everyone 10mo agoJust get Windows 10 LTSC from the pirate bay and install IOT version. It's an actually good version of Windows MS dont sell to normal people.
- loeg 10mo agoIt's possible, but it won't get security updates anymore.
- kristofferR 10mo agoWindows 10 is outdated, not recommended at all. Just install Win11 Enterprise and get your favorite LLM to give you instructions to remove the stuff you don't want, after like 15 minutes it will be totally cleaned for perpetuity.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Unai 10mo agoNot recommended by whom? Win10 still works perfectly fine, has less bloatware, will be supported for a while, and probably won't get updates that just add useless AI and advertisements. If someone wants/needs Windows, I would absolutely recommend windows 10 right now, it's probably the best time for using that version.
- wvenable 10mo agoIf you're willing go through a little bit of trouble -- and it sounds like you are -- it's pretty easy to configure Windows 11 to look and act pretty much like Windows 7. You'd be hard pressed to tell what version of Windows I'm running if you gave it a cursory glance. The main tool for me is https://www.startallback.com/ https://www.startallback.com/ O2O Shutup ( https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 ) is also pretty useful for disabling anything you don't like all in one place -- it doesn't even install.
- nilslindemann 10mo agoI also found Winscript and Windhawk useful. https://github.com/flick9000/winscript https://github.com/flick9000/winscript https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk
- layer8 10mo agoOnly Aero, Classic theme not really.
- shepherdjerred 10mo agohttps://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links
- xiconfjs 10mo ago„just like the gypsy woman said“
- alex1138 10mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081 already posted
- incognito124 10mo agoThank you, Microsoft, for accelerating the advent of The Year of The Linux Desktop
- petepete 10mo agoThey're pulling out all the stops. If you told me that whoever was in charge of the consumer versions of Windows was trying to drive it into the ground, I'd believe you.
- dotancohen 10mo agoTo be fair, Microsoft did deliberately drive Nokia into the ground.
- wvenable 10mo agoNokia was driving pretty close to the ground before Microsoft ever got involved.
- lfllfkddl 10mo agoWell, many consider Elop to be a Microsoft asset.
- saubeidl 10mo agoMaybe the Finns got their mole in to extract revenge. Don't forget Linux is Finnish as well ;-)
- wiseowise 10mo agoPerfectly balanced, as all things should be.
- justsomehnguy 10mo agoLook at the Nokia sales volume, revenue and the date of Burning Platform memo - and don't repeat this bullshit ever again.
- jjaksic 10mo agoWhen Nadella took over from Ballmer, he steered Microsoft in a better direction for a while. But by now he's become a lot worse. The biggest software company can no longer produce good software and its products are actively hostile to users. Nadella cares only about one thing, which is shoving AI everywhere and to everyone, at any cost. The irony is that he knows nothing about AI, how to build capable models or how to build useful AI products, nor does he have people who do. AI is his Metaverse: something he's singularity focused on, to the point of neglecting everything else, without any idea what to actually do with it.
- YY4387268632 10mo agoI noticed an immediate dip in quality of the products when Nadella came into power. Even Windows 8, for all the faults of the Metro UX, felt like a complete product.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 10mo agoI miss Balmer in what concerns Windows development culture.
- burnte 10mo agoAs someone who lived through a small portion of the internal mess that was Vista, I DO NOT miss him at all. I worked there 6 months and his bizarre management directives were obvious. Behind every single developer push was a lock-in push, too. Every "open" product had to have some form of lock in or vendor-only advantage. None of it was driving customer success, it was all about enforcement and lock-in from top down.
- pjmlp 10mo agoMeanwhile nowadays everyone at Windows is a Web developer.
- InsideOutSanta 10mo agoI have a little AMD AliExpress PC where the Windows installer recognizes neither the wifi card nor the Ethernet port. I guess there's a way to download the drivers on another computer and load them during installation, but instead of figuring out how to do that or what the latest option for circumventing the online requirement is, it now runs Pop OS.
- Wowfunhappy 10mo agoNothing wrong with Pop OS, but I assume you could still install Windows without activating it, install the drivers, then activate online.
- buccal 10mo agoWithout unofficial bypasses of MS online account requirements you would not come to a point where activation is a concern. No internet access is not enough of a reason for MS let you use your device.
- burnt_toast 10mo agoThat won't work. Windows won't let you finish the installation process unless you connect to the internet so you can't get the PC to a point where you could install the drivers.
- blagie 10mo agoReally? When did this come up? I know tons of people who run Windows unactivated. The key difference is there's a watermark. Otherwise, it seems to work fine.
- jasomill 10mo agoPersonalization options like wallpaper and color settings are disabled until activation, though I'm sure there are workarounds.
- Wowfunhappy 10mo agoWhat does this mean for using Windows in air gapped environments? I would have assumed this was common enough to make Microsoft want to support it. Is it possible to activate via a web browser on a separate computer, similar to the flow for phone activation?
- cheschire 10mo agoyou probably need to stand up a key management server (KMS)
- octoberfranklin 10mo agoThat is not air gapped
- cheschire 10mo agoMy assumption is that the system is on an air-gapped network, as individual systems that are completely isolated are typically not very useful as a full user environment, and are more likely to be fully embedded systems instead.
- bigstrat2003 10mo agoThe original post said "air gapped environments", not "air gapped computers". Running several computers on a network which has no connections to the outside qualifies as an air gapped environment, and will let you use a key server just fine.
- wvenable 10mo agoJust don't activate. It's not necessary.
- Wowfunhappy 10mo agoIf you're a home user, I agree. But if you're a business, wouldn't this be a liability?
- well_actulily 10mo agoI'll never install Windows on another machine.
- giantg2 10mo agoThe way this is going, I'm probably going Linux only next time I upgrade.
- sksksm 10mo ago[dead]
- sksksm 10mo ago[dead]
- hiccuphippo 10mo agoI read their handheld Xbox is a version of Windows with none of the bloat nor slop. I'm sure they'll never sell that as a version of Windows but I wonder if it's possible to make it into an installable by third parties like other custom ISOs that float around the internet.
- atomicnumber3 10mo agoIs this the last way that was vaguely easy to access? Can you still run the OOBE command or use the XML unattended install method?
- nzeid 10mo agoWould like to know this as well.
- Jare 10mo agoWhen I recently installed Windows 11 on my new rig, it didn't recognize the built-in motherboard wifi and I could only connect after installation of Windows + mobo drivers. How would that work now?
- MrDOS 10mo agoJust like you used to be able to provide storage drivers on a floppy disk, you can now provide NIC drivers on a USB stick. (IIRC, there's a button for it on the Microsoft account sign-in page of the OOBE.)
- nottorp 10mo agoThere are activation cracks right?
- wolvoleo 10mo agoI do have to say that telephone process was terribly tedious. You had to enter 50 digits or so and it would repeat them all to confirm, ugh.
- rationalist 10mo agoYou could do so by keypad, and I was done in either 3 or 4 minutes (I forget which).
- wolvoleo 10mo agoYes it just felt really really awkward and drawn out. I really hated it. I had some sequestered VMs at work which were not allowed internet access so I got this a lot. Was a security lab.
- rawling 10mo agoDupe 283 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081
- 867-5309 10mo agoawaiting what massgrave dev do about this. if nothing, then there's nothing to worry about
- spudlyo 10mo agoWith both Windows 11 and macOS Tahoe now being non-starters for many, it's clear that we're going to continue to see impressive growth in the Linux desktop in 2026. Last year I migrated my Windows gaming machine to Ubuntu, and it's been a great success. I don't play games that require kernel level anti-cheats, so for me, Proton has worked great. I'm playing new games like Anno 117 on my 2019 vintage RX 5700xt and am having a blast. I'm about to wipe my Windows 10 partition and not look back. I still have an M1 laptop with a broken screen that is going strong in clam shell mode, but once it dies or I can no longer run Sequoia for whatever reason, I'll be tempted to abandon macOS if Apple can't move beyond the mess they've made with Tahoe.
- simondotau 10mo agoI’m still on Sequoia; I have high hopes that Tahoe is an aberration that will be fixed with the departure of Alan Dye. But let’s keep things into perspective here. The subtle enshitifications of macOS are mild compared to the train wreck of Windows 8 onwards. I daily drove Windows 7 until 2015; IMHO it’s the greatest version of Windows ever. My wife works for a large corporation that is 100% Windows. I first used Windows 11 a few weeks ago when I was troubleshooting a connectivity problem on her laptop. To some extent my lack of experience with Windows 11 was a factor, but configuring network settings shouldn’t be so obtuse and fragmented. It didn’t feel serious. It felt like a parody of an operating system.
- spudlyo 10mo agoI agree that Tahoe is considerably less enshitified than Windows, but they are slowly turning the screws on us. With every release, it becomes harder and harder to run unsigned macOS binaries, and I can't shake the feeling that their ultimate goal is turn the Mac into more of a "trusted appliance" and less of a general-purpose computer. Gatekeeper & notarization, System Integrity Protection, hardware level security enforcement, all of these shifts reek of security paternalism, platform convergence, and ultimately ... control. This frog is starting to feel the water boil, and to mix metaphors, can see the walls of the garden getting higher.
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- jimbo808 10mo agoIf/when support for Linux gaming becomes widespread and easy to navigate with few configuration hurdles, Windows will die very quickly. As for MacOS, I genuinely can't wrap my head around why anyone who is technically competent would prefer that OS.
- herpdyderp 10mo agoUnfortunately sim racing requires Windows (that's my last holdout). As far as macOS goes, Linux is so good but I also like my peripherals to work for my job where I don't have time to tinker all day.
- 3eb7988a1663 10mo agoFewer and fewer people own home computers anymore. I would not be surprised if ChromeOS laptops outpace home Windows install at some point. The bastion of Windows installations will still be the corporate market. Outside of developer circles, Macs are only used by executives - the drones still get underspecced Windows laptops.
- pzo 10mo agonot only corporate but also many small shops still running some dedicated software for PoS. Maybe wine will work but it's a lot of hassle still and too risky for trying something that critical to work for such PoS scenarios. Also not sure if situation changed but at least 5 years ago most ATMs in asia were running windows based on talk with my friend working in this field.
- jimbo808 10mo agoYeah I think my original comment was a bit overstated. I think it would have been more accurate to say Windows would die for the consumer desktop market.
- paulryanrogers 10mo agoDoubtful this will ever happen for the most lucrative part of desk/lap-top gaming: multiplayer and micro transaction games. They require anti-cheat to keep the money flowing. And IIUC, Linux fundamentally grants too much user control for effective anti-cheat.
- michaelhoffman 10mo agoI understand why this is bad, but I personally would sign up for a Microsoft account anyway. Mainly, I don't want all my stuff in "C:\Users\micha". Is there a way to set your username?
- layer8 10mo agoUnless you prepare a custom image for installation, a non-local account is created, but you can replace it by a local account later.
- lencastre 10mo agowhat about that mass grave site … asking for a friedn
- spwa4 10mo agoThe only official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet is to insert a linux installation USB stick. Got it.
- bossyTeacher 10mo agoThe responses here baffle me. This IS GOOD NEWS. HN more than anyone should understand this. Every mistake Microsoft makes with Windows is a free win for Linux. We should celebrate this and encourage Nadella to make Windows as hostile as possible. Add that nasty recall ai spyware, put ads everywhere. People here hating on Nadella and loving Ballmer are missing the point. This is not a partisan issue. Windows stopped being good a long time ago. Arguably XP was the last good version of Windows. Windows becoming an OS mostly for corporate types is beneficial for the world. Let us celebrate!
- layer8 10mo agoA decent amount of people actually like Windows as graphical user interface, and some of the related tech. That's a loss that Linux can't replace in a comparable fashion. Unless https://loss32.org/ https://loss32.org/ becomes a viable reality, that is.
- joshribakoff 10mo agoThe flaw in this logic is they are a monopoly. They continue to profit off of the bad user experience, that’s been their business model since day one, and they keep posting growth numbers. I hope they do die, but in the meantime the bad decisions still negatively impact users, and many of them didn’t have a choice. The other flaw in your logic is assuming that markets are free. A free market is one that is both informed and consents. In this market, there is both misinformation and a lack of consent.
- EAtmULFO 10mo agoServer 2022 > Windows 11 for desktop OS. No bloatware, less garbage, almost identical driver and application support.
- andix 10mo agoAn expensive solution.
- Retr0id 10mo agoWell, only if you pay for it
- layer8 10mo agoIt EOLs in October this year, however.
- jasomill 10mo agoServer 2025, then? Though admittedly $1,176/16 cores is a bit steep for a desktop OS, and don't forget the CALs if you plan to use file sharing or Remote Desktop (or third party alternatives like Steam Remote Play).
- EAtmULFO 10mo agoSecurity updates through 2031. I'd rather not worry about added "features" introducing yet more bugs.
- layer8 10mo agoOnly with Extended Support, which you get for free.
- hasperdi 10mo agoWhy Windows Server 2022, not 2025? Can't the latter be used as desktop OS?
- throawayonthe 10mo agoYou should still be able to activate windows offline by using the "ZeroCID" or "KMS4k" methods with https://massgrave.dev/chart#basics https://massgrave.dev/chart#basics
- AceJohnny2 10mo agothose do not appear to be, er... legitimate ways of activation.
- ivanjermakov 10mo agoIf you think Windows is bad, imagine there are people paying real money to use it.
- hexo 10mo agoWindows becoming less and less relevant every day and then they do this. 2026 is gonna be true Year of the Linux Desktop.
- llmslave2 10mo agoMicrosoft? Nah, it's called Microslop now.
- ChrisArchitect 10mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081
- eboy 10mo ago[dead]
- burnt-resistor 10mo agoThe internet recognizes obstacles as damage and hacks around it. ;)
- mindcrash 10mo agoNext up: Anything running or playing on Windows can be solely distributed, installed and updated through the Microsoft Store. Actually, I should place a bet on Polymarket for that.
- applewizard5 10mo agoIt's all going downhill from here. Jesus.
- bschmidt25010 10mo ago[dead]