Enlighten Me How does Windows Loader Activate Windows

On pc's with a valid slic it only installs the appropriate certificates + oem:slp key.
On pc's without a valid slic it also installs the loader part which emulates the oem bios.

 

More generally, can anyone recommend a general introduction text, on the whole subject of Microsoft Win7-8-10 OS activation?

Context: Up till now I've stuck with WinXP, and expect to continue using XP for my primary PC. However I do now need one Win7 machine, to run NTLite to create a custom Win7 image for several other dedicated machines.
I've been using computers since before 'PCs' existed. The reason I stuck with XP: that was the last OS MS made that was half-bearable. After that they went too creepy, intrusive, UI-shuffling, spying and feature-crippling for my taste. I have other pursuits, and didn't want to mess with UEFI, closed-platform, secretive SMM and all the other layers of security/deception MS/Intel have added. I'm one of those who feel it's all a charade, MS/Intel have embedded so many back doors in the current architecture that security is a total illusion. As recently proven by the various shadowbrokers/wikileaks NSA tool dumps. So all this pretend-security is just deliberate time wasting and incrementally closing the box, working towards total control of the hardware by MS-Intel.

(My reasons for not just switching to Linux are complicated, no point going into that here.)

With the 'new' Win7 machine I have:
* Installed a genuine Win Pro 7 SP1 X64, with valid code off the pack. (the 5 blocks of 5 alpha-nums thing)
* Enabled a real administrator account.

At this point the machine is complaining about being illegitimate, because it doesn't have Net connection. Which it isn't going to get.
Online activation, and the whole auto-update mindf*ck are not acceptable to me.

Next: install Windows Loader v2.2.2. But reading the readme, I'm getting a feeling much could go wrong, and I won't have the faintest what's happening.

I need an ELI5 on this whole topic, to save many hours of google-floundering. Also, texts recommended from here would hopefully be realistically cynical, so I don't have to read pablum pretending all this SLIC/etc stuff is for my own good. I hate that.

 

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Thanks for the links everyone. Yes, I will search, just trying to cut down the time required at the start of this learning curve. Busy atm.
@Tito, yeah I know phone activation exists. But it's not the *means* of activation that I don't find acceptable. It's that the need exists at all. As far as I'm concerned, anything I use must be able to be set up entirely independently of external sources of 'permission'. And the implied external awareness of my existence and systems setup.

 

oh.... you mean like you want privacy?
well good luck with that

 

Yes, I do. Not 'want' but insist. Privacy is just one point of many on which I disagree with MS's demonstrated objectives. But it, like most others is not negotiable.
Just because MS does their best to ensure I shouldn't have privacy, is no reason to give up. Also privacy is not binary; there are degrees. In resisting the MS-Borg, one does what one can.
Also, if everyone agrees it's best to give up, why then do offline activation tools exist at all?

 

The tools exist because many don't want to pay for anything anymore (and only one real tool exists, daz windows loader..).

Why is buying it legit not giving you the privacy you think you deserve?

The telemetry on 7 isn't that intrusive, most is for upgrade compatibility or error reporting, not like the data collecting on win 10, iOS, OS xx, android or every other existing OS, even linux collects data.

 

What, you think that is the ONLY reason? Actually it's one of the many reasons...

Who said I bought it? Also what's this "privacy I think I deserve"? Nice way to phrase it like a) wanting privacy is some kind of weird fetish, and b) that I can't by natural right choose whatever degree of privacy I wish.

The firing squads aren't that intrusive, just a tiny bit of bullet through the head. All the governments were doing it, even the Anarchists.
Is there some part of It's nobody's business but mine what PCs I run, when I run them, for how long, with what OS, etc that you have a problem with?

By the way, isn't this amusing: (I can't post links yet. Just google. It's on Networkworld.)

MINIX — The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel
You might not know it, but inside your Intel system, you have an operating system running in addition to your main OS, MINIX. And it’s raising eyebrows and concerns.​

PS. At some point I'll figure out how to do proper quoting in this forum. Patience.

 

Well, just use somebody else's phone.
Or some sort of voip call with a disposable phone number.

fwiw: oem-slp activation is completely offline, no internet required.

 

It seems to me this thread is wandering off into the swamp
The question was how the loader activates windows
let's start from scratch
Computer manufacturers make a deal with M$ to use windows on their computers
Prior to Win 10 they would install a small piece of code (the SLIC) in their bios to tell windows
that this computer was part of the deal. There's a different SLIC for each manufacturer.
To go along with this SLIC each manufacturer was given an OEM key for each version of windows to be installed.

So each time the computer boots Windows looks for the SLIC in the bios, then for the proper OEM key
and if it all checks the installation will be flagged as activated when it boots.

There are two ways to achieve this if your computer's bios does not contain the proper SLIC

1. The first is to modify the bios to include the proper SLIC and there's a whole section here at MDL devoted to that.

2. Now here's where the loader comes in
To make the boot process go faster the bios is copied from rom to ram so it can be read faster
and this provides the opportunity to add the proper SLIC to the bios as part of that loading process
So the computer first starts using grub (the Linux loader) reads the rom bios , adds the SLIC, writes
the modded bios to ram passes the loading process to windows, then stops and is cleared from memory
Windows then loads finds the SLIC where it's supposed to be , finds the OEM key where it's supposed to be
and flags the loaded windows version as activated each time the computer boots.

The first time you run the loader after installing windows it will check if the proper SLIC can be found
if it can it will install the proper OEM key and you're done. Windows will be flagged as activated

If it can't find a SLIC , you click a box called install and it installs the grub loader and the proper SLIC and the proper OEM key .

And like Capt Kirk said this whole process takes place off line
no information is passed to anyone

I hope this helps

...T

 

@tonto - There are three parts to oem-slp, a slic table provided by bios, or emulated by loader, a certificate that matches the slic, and a key. You didn't mention the certificate.

One of the links mentioned by Tito describes oem-slp for Vista, which applies also to Win 7. (slp2.1 and slp2.0 function similarly)

 

We should all thank the dead slow BIOS ROM of that time. Without Shadow RAM, the principle wouldn't have worked at all.

 

Startup routines in the bios certainly initialize system description tables, which can later be rewritten with slic injection by a special boot loader, but the entire bios of course would not really be copied into ram.

 

Of course not, but parts of BIOS contents were shadowed because the access was terribly slow in old times. I have old PCs where you can toggle Shadowing and the speed difference is noticeable.

 

If your not tied to M$, there's a Linux option too. And you might be able to preserve more of your privacy with that option in 2020 when they finally get to kill Windows 7. Personally I question that 2020 date.... 7 only has two years left and almost half the pc's worldwide are still using 7