Time of death: 4:22 PM UTC September 26th
Notes, please read:
For those of you who don’t know, HWID was the holy grail for Windows activation, letting you generate licenses straight from Microsoft licensing servers, being registered as fully legitimate in microsofts servers and letting you keep the activation permanently, even after windows reinstalls being completely undetectable and with nothing on your system being modified. If you’re still using outdated activation methods and you missed out on this, I’m sorry
Existing HWID licenses are left unaffected. Only new requests are blocked, no licenses were revoked.
By the way, MAS still works and is the best option for Windows/Office activation. For permanent Office activation use it’s Ohook method (supports subscription products such as 365 as well) and KMS38 for Windows
ALL OTHER ACTIVATION METHODS ARE STILL WORKING, ONLY METHOD AFFECTED IS HWID.
All HWID activators are affected, not only MAS
Around that time, Microsoft servers unexpectedly started blocking the licensing requests HWID activation method sends to Microsoft. This was a slow rollout that spanned over a few hours, at the moment the exploit is completely dead. The best options for Windows activation now is KMS38 or vlmcsd.
Patching this would boost illegal key reselling websites which causes more harm to Microsoft than HWID exploit. We can only wonder why they patched this.
{“code”:“BadRequest”,“data”:[],“details”:[],“innererror”:{“code”:“PermanentTSLRejection”,“data”:[],“details”:[{“code”:“113”,“message”:“avsErrorCode”,“target”:null}],“message”:“The Purchase Service rejected the provided TSL; the client should destroy the TSL.”,“source”:“PurchaseFD”},“message”:“The calling client sent a bad request to the service.”,“source”:“PurchaseFD”}
TLS=Temporary Signed License=The tickets HWID activation sends. Microsoft servers are now just responding with “kill it.”
Transferring existing HWID licenses to other computers using Microsoft account is broken too.
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I’m so happy now that I’ve finally fully migrated to linux.
What’d you end up on, out of curiosity? I was on Fedora for a couple years, but with the whole Red Hat thing (that I don’t fully understand the implications of), I switched to openSUSE Tumbleweed. Still have love for Mint, though, after all these years.
I’m using endevour os now, though I started on mint a few months ago and loved it. The wife is using mint now and just commented yesterday that it was a very seamless transition from windows. Only problems have been related to nvidia being dumb.
Glad you’re enjoying it. I haven’t messed with Endevour much myself, as Arch-based stuff is a little more hands on than I want to be, personally, most of the time. I think the switch to Linux is easier than a lot of people think. It really just takes some patience, knowing that it’ll be an adjustment, and accepting that you’ll need to find alternatives to some apps.
I’m still a Fedora guy, started on Ubuntu years ago, tried arch (loved AUR) and all the Ubuntu derivatives but once I hit fedora it just stuck.
i want to switch but acer laptops man
What’s up W it?
i tried installing linux there. doesn’t work. apparently needs a bootable device
I made the mistake of fucking around and finding out with the AUR on Manjaro (before all the major drama). Broke it - though, it did make it 2 years beforehand, amazingly. But yeah, totally about Fedora. Fedora made me stop distrohopping.
RedHat still pushes their changes upstream whenever possible, and is one of the largest OSS contributors. These changes were to make it harder for companies like Oracle who feed off of RHEL. The same reason you can’t view RH support docs any more, Oracle used to reply to their paid users (running RHEL clones) with copy/paste from the RH docs.
Great time to switch to Linux
Ya! And then just quit my job, since none of it runs on Linux.
I mean if you’re already using a Windows machine for work you’re not gonna have to switch.
I imagine unless you’re self employed, you are probably given a machine to work on with a predefined operating system picked by your employer. If someone is in a place where they’re forced to use windows and the employer is making them pay for this equipment and software out of pocket, then that’s wicked scummy of the employer.
I’m just saying this cause I imagine the original comment your replying to has some implicit context of “when possible” or “on my own machine”.
Also it’s a bummer your software doesn’t work on Linux, nothing worse than being locked into a platform.
I imagine unless you’re self employed, you are probably given a machine to work on with a predefined operating system picked by your employer.
And it’s all managed by the IT department. I use Linux on all my personal devices, but on my work computer, I don’t deal with ads, bloatware, or most other things that people complain about Windows because IT took care of that already through group policy and whatnot.
My IT department likes to install antivirus software that makes it impossible to do your job because it will scan every compiled object file, inflating compilation times by an order of magnitude, even for distributed compilation jobs.
Or stupid “workspace management” software that will randomly uninstall work-related software and / or reboot your machine whenever it pleases.
Luckily I can use Linux at work, otherwise I’d have to either quit or tamper with my work machine to do my job.
And yes, the IT department knows. But they are always “understaffed” to fix stuff. Curiously, they are never understaffed to roll out new stuff that doesn’t work though.
I always thought microsoft allowing HWID activation was a deliberate move to get as many people to use windows and got them enrolled into windows updates, which bolster their market share and allow them to push ads/promotion for their various services to windows start menu. I think microsoft got a lot more to lose from ending HWID activation.
Good thing i switched to linux
How do you know if someone runs Linux? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Good. Free and Open Source Software should be the standard.
Hopefully I don’t need to point you towards the endless list of enshittification for why.
How do you know someone participates in pirating?
Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.I also use linux btw
I recently tried ubuntu on my laptop, every time i brought it back from sleep/hibernation my touchpad wasn’t working and i had to reboot. It’s been a few years since i used it last, i was expecting significantly better stability than that…
Consider trying others as well. Fedora or openSUSE Tumbleweed may fix the issues Ubuntu had.
You’d think they had hardware support for a 9 year old laptop done by now…
That’s fair. The differences are still possible though
I also had similar issue, after disabling track pad in bios it stopped working.
Microsoft is stupid, someone high up is getting greedy or desperate.
Patching HWID is annoying and doesn’t stop piracy. In fact it will break a lot of legacy systems in general; which is probably what they intended and why they are guilty of corporate greed in this case.
I hate Micro$hit but I am REQUIRED to use Windows by too many stupid fucking different idiots, apps, and games to count. Linux is still not there yet for me usability-wise; though it probably is still improving.
No; I will never accept that CLI is an acceptable end-user implementation; GUI is required; along with ease of use and the polish that comes with it. I don’t mind CLI interfaces; but I do feel they’re not user-friendly enough usually. They REQUIRE YOU to LEARN a few things to get used to them; which is the opposite of an intuitive interface.
NOTE: I am very FLOSS accepting when it meets my needs; but I will not hold back criticism. Do not try to shout me down. You will always be wrong. Windows is factually more user-friendly and application compatibility diverse than Linux.
I genuinely hope that Linux finds more ways to 100% match Windows functionally without forcing the user to compromise. We need to punish Microsoft for all these years of monopoly holding and reclaim computing more effectively.
It’s funny how computers are almost the only human invention that for some reason must be able to be used without learning anything.
We don’t do that for almost anything else. We expect people to learn how to drive, how to fill taxes, how to buy things on the store, how to cook, how to play chess. It seems like the only cases when someone decides learning stuff is an inconvenience is when tech people get into another field and tries to disrupt it.
I am all about making things as simple as they can be, but not simpler. Intuitive is a super relative term that depends on your knowledge and life experience. People find Office intuitive after using it for twenty years, but for me is a nightmare where legacy features intermingle with weird cloud and AI shit, and most of the time I only need a markdown file. No interface is intuitive, they are only familiar, clear, accesible, discovereable, etc.
Interface Design goes in cycles of skeuomorphism and simplification because computer stuff is not Intuitive, you have to open the way with metaphors people can understand, and when they are part of everyday life you can make the app for the virtual credit cards not look like it’s made of leather.
There’s definitely a fine line between having to learn the ins and outs of something to use it in any capacity and being able to just pick up something and have it work.
Musical instruments take years of practice. But after just a couple weeks most people can start fiddling around. Once there’s a foundation, it gets built on.
Realistically, how many Linux users have memorized every command they use? How many of them actively are looking up lists or guides on how? The memes of developers just being professionals at search engines exists for a reason, no? That’s not to say that there’s no foundation under Linux, but it’s much less encompassing.
Then there’s the whole thing of inconsistency. In music or art, most of what you learn translates. Sure, if you’re a baritone moving to a tenor you might have some adjustments, but it’s quite literally a simple shift. Not the case for computers though, because there’s no transposing from one “language” to another. If you’re following a guide online and you don’t have the same distro, chances are high it will not work.
I’m all for people learning and honing skills to accomplish a goal. I’m also for simplicity and ease of access. If someone wants to set up a personal home server, it does seem a little ridiculous to have to learn the entirety of the ins and outs of networking just because I want to host some local services. Especially when there are hundreds of guides all detailing how to, each with a different way of doing the same thing, and each not working on your personal system for whatever reason. It’s also especially hard when a portion of the community becomes condescending when questions are asked.
All in all I think it comes down to the intent of the tool. For music and art the intent is both to create and to practice the skill for that creation. For computers, well there are people who can practice the skill of ____, but there is also how the computer was marketed to be used by everyone.You have people making the computers and the software and you have the people using them, the overlap between the two has always been small. The idea of practicing computer skills has effectively died outside of programming, which is understandable given that colloquial “computer skills” can now encompass any hobby under the sun.
But after just a couple weeks most people can start fiddling around. Once there’s a foundation, it gets built on.
Realistically, how many Linux users have memorized every command they use?
If they invested the same few weeks of time, all of the important ones and then some!
But people don’t want to learn for even 5 minutes when it comes to computers. This is exactly parent commenters point.
Not the case for computers though, because there’s no transposing from one “language” to another. If you’re following a guide online and you don’t have the same distro, chances are high it will not work.
Yes there is, but people don’t want to learn the fundamentals that enables them to see behind the instructions. Online tutorials for computer stuff are the music equivalent of a guitar tutorial going like “place index finger on position A. Strum with middle finger and thumb at position B for 3cm for a duration of 200ms touching strings 1 theough 3. Then…” instead of a bunch of notes. Obviously this series of excruciatingly boring instructions won’t translate to even another guitar yet alone a piano. Same goes for computers. They have tonnes of things in common (just like instruments) but to see that you first have to learn the basic principles behind them.
To your last point about guitar not translating to piano - that’s not true at all which is exactly my point. Regardless, I’m not disagreeing that computers need to be learned, my point is that they have been marketed specifically against that.
Ease of use is a huge part of computers existing in our world as they do today.
Taxes aren’t intuitive either.
that’s because there’s a lot of money to be made in making it complicated.
Driving isn’t exactly intuitive either. You’d think you just hold gas and move the wheel around but it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Right but we more or less mandate learning to drive in the states. If something is essential to daily functioning in life it should have some sort of public education and testing sort of vibe huh?
And we should mandate computer literacy classes, preferably stuff that’s agnostic to OSes like avoiding viruses.
There have been Linux distros that cover 100% of Windows functionality without the need to use CLI (and even add more functionality) for years. I think the only possible way to have problems is with Wayland and NVIDIA. Usability has never been the problem: the problem is that Windows is the industry standard, so most applications and games are developed for it, most workplaces use it, all computers come with it pre-installed…
K38 still works. But yeah just switch to Linux.
Sorry for possibly a stupid question, but what’s the point of activating Windows?
I never seriously used Windows, but I have a Windows 7 VM that’s not activated, and it works. Just the wallpaper is black. Also most of our school computers don’t have activated Windows, yet it seems to work fine, there’s just the watermark. And on some it shows the “You may be the victim of…” message. Same seems to be the case for Office 2016 installed on those. Other than the “non-genuine” message, it works.I guess it’s just a personal thing. I personally cannot stand the “Please Activate Windows” watermark and MAS is such an easy tool that it just makes sense to do it. It’s not like this announcement kills MAS, you can still use the other activation methods
Possibly(?) related official notice https://devicepartner.microsoft.com/en-us/communications/comm-windows-ends-installation-path-for-free-windows-7-8-upgrade
Never spent the time to figure out what KMS actually did but seems like licenses weren’t validated when upgrading from 7 -> 8 / 11
Now, you can’t perma-crack your new PC with a “real” HWID key, then years later reinstall Windows and keep your “real” license anymore! And you can’t upgrade anymore on that new PC either! You have to patch Windows every time!
By the way you can still use a windows 7 key for windows 11, I just have an old laptop with the OEM sticker on it, works fine on every computer I ever tried. Consider just trying to find one in the trash or just take a photo of one on a computer in public that won’t likely get reinstalled.
After reading through the docs on the MAS site, KMS38 still looks pretty robust. I get that it’s not ‘permanent’ but are there any major drawbacks aside from having to re-run MAS after a fresh Windows install?
RIP. We hardly knew ye.
I tried doing a full swap from Windows earlier this year. I do a lot of local game streaming from my gaming pc to my laptop and I had issues getting this working. Didn’t have the energy to keep looking for solutions so I just went back to windows. Next time I try I will probably keep my pc on windows and only swap my laptop to Linux. One step at a time.
Have you tried Parsec? You can download the client as a host on your gamer PC and the guest on your laptop and honestly it works very well in my opinion.
Yes I’ve been using Parsec for quite some time. Love it. Doesn’t work as host on Linux.
I hope this means we’ll finally get activation methods that patch windows itself rather than playing along with their key system. Obviously it can be done since Windows AME has activation Functions completely removed yet it will never try to deactivate itself.
What’s that Ohook method you mentioned for office activation?
It was added a few days ago, you can read on it on MAS GitHub or website
Thanks. I’ll have a look at it.
