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posted by chromas on Friday November 09 2018, @11:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the S.N.A.F.U.-as-a-Service dept.

Computerworld:

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:

  1. Click Start > Settings > Update & Security
  2. On the left choose Activation
  3. Under the top section, click Troubleshoot

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:01AM (7 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:01AM (#760202)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:25AM

    by Gaaark (41) on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:25AM (#760220) Journal

    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

    by maggotbrain (6063) on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:35AM (#760223)

    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)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:56AM (#760228)

    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)

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:12AM (#760232) Homepage Journal

      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.

      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

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:46AM (#760240)

        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)

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:19AM (#760264) Journal

        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

          by stretch611 (6199) on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:14PM (#760330)

          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