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A bug in Microsoft's activation server has led to pandemonium among people trying to activate or re-activate their Windows 10 Pro licenses. No need to panic. Microsoft will fix it "within one to two business days." (Try telling your boss that.)
If you see a bogus report about an invalid Win10 Pro license, relax. It's just Microsoft's servers screwing up, again, and everything should be copacetic in a couple of days.
On Twitter, Windows leaker emeritus Faikee posted this screenshot:
[...] There's also a lengthy diatribe on Reddit.
[...] The only breath of hope that I've found comes from the Microsoft Answers Forum, where Daniel Randy quotes a Live Agent response as saying:
Thank you for sharing, Daniel. Microsoft has just released an Emerging issue announcement about current activation issue related to Pro edition recently. This happens in Japan, Korea, American and many other countries. I am very sorry to inform you that there is a temporary issue with Microsoft's activation server at the moment and some customers might experience this issue where Windows is displayed as not activated.
Our engineers are working tirelessly to resolve this issue and it is expected to be corrected within one to two business days, Daniel.
But Ask Woody says it's fixed now:
I followed the updated troubleshooting steps posted by João Carrasqueira on Neowin and, bada-boom bada-bang, it’s all activated now. The Steps:
- Click Start > Settings > Update & Security
- On the left choose Activation
- Under the top section, click Troubleshoot
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:12AM (3 children)
Actually, that's not even close to being true. The only people affected by this issue are individuals and businesses too small to have a volume license with Microsoft.
Anyone with a volume license either uses their own KMS server or MAK keys [microsoft.com] and, as such, are unaffected by the MS server issues.
So it's the little guys who get hosed. מה נשתנה [wikipedia.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:46AM
True enough, as long as it's only peon voters being affected, they might let the problem go on for years before fixing it.
Still, maybe 8 of their 841B could be at risk for such a long term snafu, so they'll probably put a couple of guys on it until it gets fixed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:19AM (1 child)
Microsoft seems to be trying very hard to get out of the consumer space without explicitly saying that. I think they've realized there's no money in it, not when Linux in the form of Android is all over the place and most users frankly haven't got the brains or the willpower to take advantage of the freedom and power a general purpose PC represents.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:14PM
I'm not so sure about that.
Over the years, Microsoft just realized that they can make more money off of consumers with telemetry. This is why any computer Win 7+ was offered free upgrades to Win 10. (I assumed that pretty much any older XP systems did not have the required horsepower.)
After all, if consumer space windows went away, everyone at home and in schools would start getting computers with OS/X and Linux. Eventually, this would force businesses to change also... after all, they don't want to train people on new skills, and if home computing went to Linux/Mac, all the corporate desktops would soon follow.
This may question why Microsoft continues to force activation on an O/S that they practically give away to consumers, but the obvious answer is that it gives them name and address information that ties back to the computer and (unique) mac address(es).
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P