- So a number of you left comments on our recent video "Introducing AMD's
Threadripper 2 2990WX CPU" about the overlay on the bottom right corner of my screen,
prompting me to activate Windows. Now, some of you were amused
and some of you were upset, but you all had one thing in common. You couldn't imagine why an organization like Linus Media Group, one with sponsors like CableMod whose configurator now includes a customizable RGB backplate option that can enhance the look
of your GPUs and SSDs. It's compatible with
Aura Sync, RGB Fusion, Mystic Light Sync, and
CableMods's own RGB kits. And you can find out at the link below. Why an organization like Linus
Media Group with sponsors, like that would need
to save a hundred bucks here and there on a legit copy of Windows. Well, why don't we talk about that? (upbeat music) So let's begin by
grabbing a Windows license out of the pile, preferably one that isn't in use by Denis. So by the way, I got this at NCIX, so I clearly didn't just run out and buy them for the purpose
of making this video. So this would be the official procedure for installing Windows on a PC. In this case, it's my personal test bench, the one that I usually
have in my office here. Now, I'm basically going to be burning this license for the purpose
of creating this video, which sucks 'cause it's actually
a Windows 10 Pro license, but it's important for me
to demonstrate my point here to show you guys actually
activating Windows and how that might work on a test bench. And hey, there we go. Activation Windows 10
Pro Windows is activated with a digital license. Now, let's say that I was working on something like a video card review. So typically what we do in those cases is we get our pile of
graphics cards ready here. Then, after we've run our
benchmarks on one card, we shut down the system
and swap out to a new one. There's only one small problem with that. Microsoft's activation servers create a unique identifier for your PC, based on the hardware
that's installed in it. So you can see, we actually survived one
graphic card swap here, but if too many things changed, let's say you keep
swapping graphics cards, you wanted to see how
the system runs with half as much memory, you change out the CPU or worst of all, you need to change out the motherboard. Either to try a different platform or as a troubleshooting measure, what can happen is that
identifier can change. And I don't fully understand
exactly how it determines when it changes, but if it does, it can prompt Windows to deactivate. So, we had checked this before we started and it wasn't activated yet. So that's pretty funny
because on this one, I had even gone as far as to swap out the boot drive I was using, but it still managed to grab something about the hardware ID and
managed to migrate the license. But, the point is that at some point, you will get that prompt back. Now, in the olden days, and I guess this was probably
about seven, eight years ago, the solution to getting
an activation prompt was to call up Microsoft's
activation hotline, try the automated reactivation process, have that error route twice, so this was like a 10 minute project, then press a button to be put
through to a representative, explain that you had changed
out some of your hardware and you needed a reset on your license. But, this was time consuming and it wasn't even a sure thing. I actually remember getting
into a fairly heated argument with a rep who was telling me that I had run out of
reactivations for my use case, which is swapping
hardware out all the time in order to test it. I had to just buy a new license
every time I got prompted with that activate Windows watermark. And I mean, she said there
was nothing she could do and at some point I went (indistinct) it was a pretty awkward conversation. But my point is even if she was right, according to Microsoft
terms for the license, I'm also right too. I can't be expected to run out and buy a new license for
Windows every time there's some new hardware launch and I've got to do something
with my test bench. Fortunately, around that time, I got a subscription to TechNet, a software subscription service that allowed you to use pretty
much any Microsoft software in a noncommercial environment
with unlimited activations. Now that actually worked great for me, even though technically my
use was commercial since it was a for-profit endeavor
that I was doing this testing, at least it was great until
they shut down TechNet in 2013. Now, the new legit way
to transfer your license is the activation troubleshooter. So you can see what I've done now is I just linked my digital license to a Microsoft account. So I've never done this
before, but theoretically, what happens here is we should be able to even swap the drive and go into that settings menu and migrate the license to another computer on our own, which is pretty cool and a lot
better than the old system. So let's give that a shot, shall we? So we're not gonna get to show you guys is exactly how it works because the Microsoft
activation servers work in mysterious ways, but overall it sounds pretty painless. There's supposed to be a prompt, transferring your license, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, et
cetera, something along, yep, they don't have
any screenshots either. What are those? Anyway, eventually, no matter how you're
moving your license around, their terms do state that you
will run out of activations at some point. But with that said, through this method, and then, maybe some of
those cheap $20 Windows Keys that you can get from gray
market sources online, there should be no
justification then for having that activated Windows watermark, right? Like we should just bite the bullet and go through this process. Except for one problem. Those $20 keys that you buy online are not intended for the North American or the European market and they are therefore not actually legit. So if having the watermark
removed from your system is where you draw the line and that's what helps you sleep
at night, then that's great. But the thing about software
is that the license terms are defined by the EULA, that the read this first stuff, not by whether a key
activates or doesn't activate with Microsoft servers. For example, the Windows 10 VM that I have set up for remote access for one of our offsite workers is technically against
Microsoft's license terms. Yeah, I actually found
that out just yesterday, while I was prepping this video. Regular Windows 10 is
technically not allowed to be used exclusively for remote access. The more you know, right? In much the same way,
if you've got a buddy, who's got a volume license
agreement or a site key, that's not legit either. It'll activate for you and it'll get rid of the watermark, but that is still software piracy. So at the end of the day, there are inexpensive
and even free ways for us to make sure that that
watermark never shows up in one of our videos again, but they involve either
gray market software or violation of the licensed terms anyway. So for a use case, that's
unsupported anyhow, our whole thing where
we're using test benches to validate hardware, the best solution that
we've actually found is just to leave the software unactivated forever. So here's the regular installer and you might not have
ever noticed this before, but Microsoft actually has a built in way to run Windows for testing purposes. So check out this button here. Depending on the version of Windows, the amount of time that
you're allowed, differs. But if all we do is click skip instead of entering a product key, the Windows installation
will proceed exactly the way that it normally would. We still get Windows updates,
performance of our hardware isn't impacted whatsoever, we don't have to waste time tooling around with any activation nonsense. And for my part, honestly,
I sleep just fine at night, knowing that my pile of
Windows keys downstairs more than covers the test benches that we have deployed. So if you ever see our
activation watermark in one of our videos, again,
you will understand why. I'm just avoiding some paperwork, it has nothing to do with
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below to learn more about this speaker and get a chance to win one. So thanks for watching guys. If you disliked this video,
you can hit that button, but if you liked it hit like get subscribed, or
maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in video description. Sure, go by Windows 10. While you're down there, you can check out our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum. You should definitely join that.
Tl;dw
because Microsoft makes things overly difficult
Why Does Linux Pirate Windows?**
Who doesnt
Pirating windows is the only thing i approve about torrenting.
I use linux almost 95% of the time. I have a VMware image with Windows 10 in it which from time to time I will boot to use for something, much of the time it's only to allow it to update itself. It works perfectly fine even though it isn't registered. Once I left it up for a week to run a relay server for a personal project and it worked fine the entire time.
Is there any reason to actually register? Does it affect graphics or gaming if it doesn't get registered?
Now this is literally clickbait, the title implies something that doesn't happen in the video, it's awful. What happened LTT?