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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @11:49PM (1 child)
Michael David Crawford is a server expert, see?
Michael David Crawford is crazy awesome and totally not a fraudulent con artist. Microsoft hire Michael David Crawford now!
Fuck MDC
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:19AM
Salty Spice! It's great to see you here :-) You should pop over to MDC's journal and say hello. It's never a party until Salty makes an appearance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:17AM
Clippy: Your installation of Windows 10 is now authenticated. Sorry.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:20AM (16 children)
The strongest cheerleader for Linux and BSD will always be Microsoft :)
Yet another reason I'm glad I finally quit Windows.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:23AM (14 children)
One day we will be able to install Microsoft Linux.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:28AM
No. One day you'll be able to buy install disks for Microsoft Linux. Will you be able to install it? That's the usual Microsoft Crapshoot 1.0 (TM)
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:32AM (12 children)
Actually, you [zdnet.com] already [microsoft.com] can [microsoft.com].
Good Times! [youtube.com] :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:38AM (11 children)
Yeah, but wut about a Microsoft Windows® Linux® for The Desktop?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:44AM (7 children)
I would actually like to see Microsoft do that. Heck, I might even buy a copy.
At one point, they were actually competent enough to make decent administrative controls and user interfaces to control your system. The default libraries were pretty damn good, and using Windows objects was fairly painless. If they dropped their own OS entirely, and took a Linux flavor and developed everything on top of Linux, they have a pretty damn decent chance of making an impressive window manager.
You piqued my curiosity on this one. I wonder what that OS would look like? Of course this assumes they could drop telemetry and Cortana sucking all data up like the damned InfoSphere. Which is like saying a crack whore can reform and stop sucking dick for loose change. Which is to mean, possible, but highly unlikely.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:21AM (5 children)
Interesting. I've often wondered myself what might have been if Novell had ported Netware to Unix back in the 90s, rather than sticking with their crap server UI. They had the edge in file/print services as well as huge market share. And the NDS (x.500) directory was years ahead of Active Directory.
I kept waiting for them to announce such a thing after they bought Unix [wikipedia.org], but it never happened. and when developers can develop on the platform for which they're writing (cf. nlm [v3.co.uk] development [drdobbs.com] was always painful), they will do so much more frequently. What's more, the hassles of managing implementation of NLMs made Netware an inferior application server. More's the pity.
Then again, if Ray Noorda and Novell had gotten it together back in the mid 90s, we might be bitching about them instead. :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by black6host on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:05AM (2 children)
The problem with Novell, and I've worked with it a bit back in the day, was that writing applications for the server was a pain in the ass. Windows server came along and while it sucked in comparison to Novell every Tom Dick and Harry could write a server app for it. Eventually Windows Server got better though its niche is business. Of course, that's where all the money is :) I really hoped for Novell, OS/2 and Delphi. Please, don't anyone ever hire me again! :)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:02AM (1 child)
Did you do .nlm development?
(Score: 2) by black6host on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:54PM
No I had my hands full running a team that was writing our in-house applications which were all designed around our business (basically an auto club like AAA.) We used the Advantage Database Engine which ran on the server. We were consumers of server apps but not developers. This was back in the 90's sometime. Can't remember exactly when, it was that long ago :)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:00AM (1 child)
> Interesting. I've often wondered myself what might have been if Novell had ported Netware to Unix back in the 90s, rather than sticking with their crap server UI. They had the edge in file/print services as well as huge market share. And the NDS (x.500) directory was years ahead of Active Directory.
Hmmm... I miss that server screen saver! Back in those days we had much less RAM. In roughly 1994 I remember 16 MB RAM cost $2,000. The point of Netware was that it was a bare-metal OS, running the x86 at maximum efficiency. Having done a bit of assembly and studying clock cycles per instruction depending on which mode the CPU ran in, you learn that you gain a huge number of clock cycles per instruction- mostly ones with memory fetch- in protected segmented mode. I once wrote a cogent argument (for one of our salesmen) for why our Novell-based systems were better than Unix / Windows (even though I was a Linux fan)- that the server was a maximally efficient server- no GUI stuff. I even wrote that people can't play games on the server.
You really didn't do much server admin on the server- mostly done on a workstation. The older tools were full-screen text menu-driven, and newer ones were Windows GUI, but the server is just a server. Even now I run my Linux servers in text mode only. Trivial to run GUI apps on a workstation though the network if I need them, although I pretty much never do.
I did .nlm development. Nothing went to customers, but certainly could have. Still have the books, Watcom compiler, etc. I don't remember any pain, just a bit of learning Watcom and the usual API stuff. Bringing back memories...
My only criticism of Netware was that it was cooperative multitasking. But again, remember the CPU speeds and available RAM in those days (early to mid 1990s).
You probably know Linux supports IPX/SPX well.
Yes, I agree Novell should have built better GUI admin tools sooner.
I think they would have helped themselves by fully supporting NFS on TCP/IP, and SMB.
Yes, NDS was way ahead of MS.
I blame MS general heavy-handedness, and razzle-dazzling non-technical business people who made the decision about which OS to run. Also, I've heard horror stories about Novell's business practices, although I never experienced any. I just remember how efficient Netware was. I thought "elevator seek" was brilliant, for example. I'm still not sure what a "bindery" is nor why I need one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @12:11PM
It really incensed me since their reasoning was so retarded given the other crap they have been bloating the kernel up with. IPX is not a security issue if it is not used, and deprecating it or defaulting it off would solve any security issues if not maintainability ones.
Seems like the Social Jackoff Warriors are winning at making Linux as handicapable as they are.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday November 10 2018, @08:04AM
Shirley, you jest? Do you mean KDE? Or XFCE? I really do not think that M$ could manage a decent window manager, without having to include a whole damn fucked-up operating system and DRM and Registration, and phoning-home, and Key-Logger, and, well, without Micro$oft. Sucks to be them.
I don't think I have ever had a problem with a Linux Distro Authentication Server going down. Ever.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:23AM
An excellent point. That sounds like a job for [cue fanfare] Takyon! :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:41AM (1 child)
What I wonder is how the GNU folks feel about "Windows Subsystem For Linux" allowing you to download various distributions of what is essentially the GNU operating system--with the Linux part removed ("Today, the part of Linux will be played by a shim between GNU userland and the Windows kernel")--and calling it "Linux".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:56AM
That's called Cygwin [cygwin.com] (wikipedia link [wikipedia.org]) and pre-dates WSL [microsoft.com] (wikipedia link [wikipedia.org]) by at least a decade.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:06AM
This is the BIG reason we want Microsoft to NOT meddle in Linuxland and royally bollocks things up. Silo Windows, Apple and Linux in separate bins that don't mix, don't cross-contaminate and don't cross-spyware. Thank you.
Just yesterday I went to help (yet another) elderly victim of Windows 10. Flavour of the day - "wifi problems." What a moronic interface, designed for retards and the half-blind. How can anyone use this thing and stay sane? Windows reduces a nice-ish desktop to a child's toy, and a broken one at that.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:44AM
Sounds like they are using it.. It compiled, so push today's code changes to production.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:29AM
Don't you just love the Muppets [youtube.com]?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:01AM (7 children)
Excuse me for a moment... hahahahahahahaha aha ha ha ha ha ha.
I just wish this sort of shit happened more often. Then perhaps more people would understand why this form of COPY PROTECTION is stupid.
There is no guarantee at all that Microsoft will be around in the future. (And every day that passes, it seems more likely they won't) There is no guarantee there activation shit will be reachable at all times. They have no real obligation at all to magically bestow their "activation" upon you.
I remember a day a long time ago when people were weary of copy protection. Adding copy protection would cost sales, cause compatiblity issues, and make the product more cumbersome to use. People actually cared, reviewers would call them out, and customers would take their money to the competition (remember competition?).
And then it all stopped. Copy protection came back in the form of internet tethers instead of floppy disks, CD-ROMs, or dongles. And we are supposed to be happy about it and not complain. Right.
The moment Microsoft's activation servers disappear YOU... ARE... FUCKED. Remember that.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:25AM
I'm hoping that Microsoft disappears and they are fucked.
All of dem. AAAALLLLLLL!!!
Ha-ha, hee-hee, ho-ho.
Fuck em all.
Yeah.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Interesting) by maggotbrain on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:35AM
This is very true and why I won't be using an OS that relies on external license servers for use.
Personal anecdote:
About ten+ years ago, I worked with a company that developed a music purchasing and sample service for Amazon(This was prior to them developing a music service in-house). All of the music was wrapped in DRM and relied upon DRM authorization servers.
I had, probably, about 50 or so music files (all .wma) in my collection that I used for testing, at the time.
Once Amazon decided to go off and develop their own service, they turned off the DRM servers.
Instantly, those songs were no longer able to be played (unless I _may_ have had a personal tool to strip the DRM and convert the files). While the service was relatively small, it still managed to sell ~1 million music tracks. They all become unplayable once that DRM server was shut off.
As a purchasing 'consumer' who uses one of these services, I would be PISSED, if the license servers just disappeared one day when the company folds or its priorites changed.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:56AM (4 children)
Too big to fail - if this went on for more than a few days, government and/or an impromptu coalition of impacted corporations would find a way to fix Microsoft's problems for them and replace the activation servers. It would be an amazing watershed event, but with 841B market cap on the line, Microsoft themselves will most likely find a way to avoid going down that hard for some time to come.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(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
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Saturday November 10 2018, @09:01AM
Thank-you, I learned a word new to me today.
copacetic [merriam-webster.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:44PM
they will go back to using their precious Microsoft software.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:03PM
This one got me. I made a backup and was gonna put on 7, then the server came back online. Damn you and your activation bullshit. What a joke.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A