Guys I've been playing with things that Superfly said about activation and some discussion that Smorgan and I had. I decided to test out things regarding trying to save an online activation and restore it while offline. The main purpose of this is effort is to be able to clean-install your system after modifying it enough that the hardware is no longer in tolerance. I.E. you got a new motherboard, more ram, different video card, or any other number of changes. So far I've tried replacing: c:\programdata\microsoft\windows\clipsvc\tokens.dat c:\windows\system32\spp\store\2.0\tokens.dat c:\windows\system32\spp\store\2.0\data.dat i've tried restoring the wpa keys via offline edit reg load/unload I've tried copying the productid legacy stuff I don't believe that clipsvc\tokens.dat is related. the clipsvc doesn't even start when you do a slmgr /dlv So it's likely the clipsvc just transfers tokens to/from the store/servers and plugs them into the store tokens for offline mode. Thoughts guys? Maybe there's a config file somewhere or different reg keys we don't know about?
I found a strange result. After clean re-install it obv re-activated with network on. I then re-checked slmgr /dlv and it gave the info I tried to subsequently stop sppsvc and it wasn't running Then I stopped clipsvc and it was. So after stopping clipsvc I rechecked slmgr /dlv After it showed info I tried to re-stop clipsvc and it wasn't running. This is very strange. Perhaps there's some sort of data somewhere that is being accessed that we don't know about. Anyone know how to track down which system files are being accessed by a program such as sppsvc?
hmm josh cell had a file access log before but I hate to bug him if we can figure it out ourselves...
I wonder if the installationid has to match perfectly with online activation or it won't work. Does anyone know if it's possible to modify the installationid to test this?
On a VM it is pretty easy like Hyper-V change Baseboard in the XML Code: -<base_board> <serial_number type="string">Change This</serial_number> </base_board> <bios_guid type="string">{XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX}</bios_guid> <bios_serial_number type="string">Match the change above</bios_serial_number> On a physical machine not so easy without a reinstall. You would need to put the hardware ID out of tolerance.
Easy way to change the Installation Id Currently is switch Generic Retail PK to Generic MAK PK. It will activate online currently and modify your SPP Store provided you have upgraded from a qualifying OS previously. I suggest this be on a test machine in case MS changes the activation system like fixing Win8.0 KMS + Free WMC = Retail mistake they made. Some extracts from my notes which may contain a huge amount of speculation: Also noted that Win 8.0/8.1 can be upgraded OFFLINE to Win10240 and only needs Online activation. However before activation the SPP reports a weird error state: If I was to speculate I would say that the previous qualifying OS activation state is stored by the SPP and the Installation ID used to validate the online activation. Meaning is the Hardware within tolerance and Channel of the previous OS (Volume/Retail) Any way if I had the time I would attach a debugger and follow the whole upgrade process but I don't think it will yield any new data. Also very tired of "Hi We are getting things Ready" or whatever the hell it says. Bear in mind the telephone activation and use of an installation ID, is very unlikely to be able to transfer the previous activation state of the qualifying system. That is why it is not working and I would assume it will stay that way. Before anyone gets the idea of a keygen to generate Confirmation ID's consider if you want your machine to stay OFFLINE permanently. This went out the window after Volume licence offline keys were discontinued after Office 2007.