Makes little sense to use KMS or leave it unlicensed when you can just Daz loader Windows 7 and upgrade then have Windows 10 free for life without ever having to run KMS or anything again. Once you have done this once you can reinstall fresh whenever you want without ever touching Windows 7 or a crack of any-kind.
CBA dealing with some M$ accounts, i will stick to KMS and local account just like with 7 and 8.1, i dont see issue.
@redbug, Interesting Findings, I am curious what happens after 30 days of your installation, and what is the output of slmgr /dlv ? It is showing remaining grace period right, I am guessing around 15 days left ?
i have been running unactivated win 8.1 pro i got from an official MS iso, i think it was from technet or something. anyway, i have been running 8.1 pro with a generic key for a very long time (more than a year), i only get the "activate windows" watermark on my desktop sometimes.
Screenshot showing results of slmgr /dlv on my system: Control Panel > System > Windows activation Shows "Windows is not activated."
@MrAnalysis Redbug is aware of activation procedures available from the initial post He is conducting an experiment on what happens to the non activated system after a period and wants to know if anyone has experience something odd or who can join him to find out his objective Testers if you like
Sometimes when a reboot is called for, simply restarting the Windows Explorer process will accomplish the same goal and be much quicker than rebooting. Task Manager > Processes tab > Windows processes > Windows Explorer > Restart I was disappointed to find that restarting Windows Explorer did not re-enable Personalization changes on my unactivated system. In a few hours, when the Activate Windows watermark appears on my desktop, I'm going to try restarting Windows Explorer to see it that will remove it as rebooting does. I have high hopes. I read a report that said in Windows 8.1, restarting Windows Explorer got rid of the watermark in that OS. I'm hoping it works the same for Win 10.
About 3 1/2 hours after booting, the watermark appeared. I had intended to restart Windows Explorer process to see if that would get rid of the watermark, but when I looked in Task Manager > Processes tab, the Windows Explorer process was nowhere to be found. It had disappeared from the list of processes. After poking around, I noticed in the Users tab there was a listing for Windows Explorer. I restarted it. The watermark did not disappear. I noticed now that Windows Explorer re-appeared in the Processes tab. Restarted it. The watermark still did not disappear. I am disappointed.
http:// forums .mydigitallife.net/threads/35682-Removal-of-Activation-Overlay-Watermark-in-unactivated-RTM-Need-Help!?p=814141&viewfull=1#post814141 ""As you know, killing explorer.exe no longer clears the "Activate Windows" watermark. And neither does killing the twinui.dll thread with Process Explorer." There is lots of good info here on the forum, but it is scattered and hard to find. I wish it was collated, aggregated, and summarized.
August 6 Have been running about 23 days unactivated. Noticed several days ago the Universal app called Calculator started working again. The first few days after install, running without activation, I noticed some of the Universal apps would not work. When I clicked to start them, their window would appear briefly and then disappear. Calculator was one of the apps that behaved this way. I don't know exactly when it resumed working. Just a few days ago. Apps currently not working: 3D Builder Calendar -- window appears, but shows no details of the app. No text, no links. Just a blue background with an icon in the center. Camera Groove Music Mail -- same as Calendar Phone Companion Weather
Has anyone tried this with a virtual machine? I could try it but if anyone already spent the time downloading/installing it would be good to know.
The VM in which I installed Win 10 unactivated on 7/15/2015 somehow got corrupted and I had to delete it. Bummer! I was looking forward to seeing if there was any change after the machine had been running for 30 days unactivated. I do have another VM in which I installed Win 10 unactivated on 7/31/2015, so I am continuing with the experiment. One odd difference I noticed between the 7/15 machine and the 7/31 machine is that with the 7/15 machine, there was a brief period after booting when Personalization changes were enabled, but with the 7/31 machine, Personalization changes are disabled immediately after booting. The source for the 7/15 machine was an ISO I created from an ESD file. The source for the 7/31 machine is an ISO file I created using the MS Media Creation tool. I don't know if that made the difference in the Personalization behavior or not. Because updates are forced, MS can change the way the unactivated OS behaves anytime they want to. I wish MS would publish a statement explaining how the OS behaves when unactivated.
Windows Enterprise Edition will automatically reboot/shutdown after an hour or so if not activated. This seems to only happen in the Enterprise Edition.
I installed Win 10 Enterprise 64bit last night. My source was an ESD file named 10240.16384.150709-1700.th1_cliententerprise_vol_x64fre_en-us_54d610e4e51a30e8f3e2e404cb3694e2af376756.esd I used ESD Decrypter (esd-decrypter-wimlib-6.7z) to create an ISO from the ESD. The SHA1 hash of my ISO file is: 2718D0044DA698FBC4BE087810D964BB172F9AD6 If I recall correctly, the hash of my ISO file is unique and would be different from yours even if you used the same ESD file as I did, and used ESD Decrypter to create an ISO file. May I ask what was the source of the Enterprise edition that you installed? Not sure, but seems like I recall running Enterprise for more than an hour last night without it rebooting. I'm going to test again. I booted about half an hour ago. Found out you can find the uptime (time since booting) by looking on the Performance tab of Task Manager. Noticed that immediately after booting, Settings > Personalization shows "You need to activate Windows before you can personalize your PC." But, also noticed that in Control Panel > Personalization, I am able to change Themes. That seems odd. [Edit] Noticed when I installed Enterprise, I was not asked to enter a Product Key as I was when I installed the Pro version. I suppose this has something to do with the "vol" (volume) type of license. I need to do some more reading on the various types of licenses. [Edit 2] Up time shows a little over an hour. No reboot yet. [Edit 3, 4, 5] At a little over 3 hours up time and still no reboot, a watermark appeared on the lower-right part of the Desktop. It says "Activate Windows". I'm not going to do what it says. All the Universal apps seem to be working OK. Found another way to see the up time and the date and time the OS was installed: Command Prompt (run as admin) > systeminfo Perhaps the involuntary rebooting after an hour only starts after Enterprise has been running several days unactivated? https:// www. youtube.com/watch?v=-4YrCFz0Kfc
=====6:51 PM 8/11/2015 Installed Windows 10 Enterprise 90-day Evaluation, 64bit Downloaded ISO from: https:// www. microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise 10240.16384.150709-1700.TH1_CLIENTENTERPRISEEVAL_OEMRET_X64FRE_EN-US.ISO VirtualBox 5.0 Internet offline Language, Time, Keyboard Next Install now or Repair your computer. Chose Install now. License. Accept. Next Which type of install...Upgrade or Custom Chose Custom Where do you want to install... Chose unallocated space. Next Installing... Auto reboot. Getting devices ready...Auto reboot. Get going fast. Custom or Express settings. Chose Custom Turned all options off. Create an account for this PC. user name: John Next Setting up your apps... Desktop appeared. Networks. Do you want to allow your PC to be discoverable by other PCs and devices on this network? Chose yes. Devices > Guest Additions Watermark appears on lower-right of Desktop. "Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation, Windows License is expired, Build 10240" Control Panel > System > Windows activation shows "Connect to the Internet to activate Windows" Settings > Update and Security > Activation shows "Activation. Connect to the Internet to activate Windows" slmgr -dlv shows: License Status: Notification Notification Reason: grace time expired Remaining Windows rearm count: 2 Remaining SKU rearm count: 2 Why doesn't it show I have 90 days to evaluate? Made Custom Changes Installed AVG Went online and ran Windows Update. On the MS page from which I downloaded Enterprise Evaluation, it says: https:// www. microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise "In order to use Windows 10 Enterprise, you must sign in to your PC with a Microsoft account. The option to create a local account will be made available at the time of the final release." "If you fail to activate this evaluation after installation, or if your evaluation period expires, the desktop background will turn black, you will see a persistent desktop notification indicating that the system is not genuine, and the PC will shut down every hour." I installed the OS while offline. There was no mention of signing in with a MS account. [Edit] My current Desktop color is not black. It is dark gray, as I chose when I made some Personalization changes. Will the Desktop turn black some time later? I suspect it will. Will the OS shut down after 1 hour uptime? I suspect it will. Current uptime is 20 minutes. So, I'll find out afterwhile whether or not it shuts down. If I ran the infamous rearm command, would the watermark disappear, and would the system report that I have 90 days to evaluate? I suspect it might. I hope it will. Plan to try that later. [Edit] Uptime is a little more than 1 hour. So far, no involuntary reboot. No black screen. Just now noticed watermark now says "Windows License valid for 90 days". slmgr -dlv shows: Licence Status: Licensed Timebased activation expiration: 129523 minutes, 90 days Dang! I don't know when the license status went from being expired to being valid for 90 days. I wasn't paying close enough attention. Maybe it happened when I went online and ran Windows Updates? The watermark that appears on this Evaluation version is quite different from the mark on the non-evaluation version that I installed previously. The Evaluation watermark says "Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation, Windows License valid for 90 days, Build 10240". It appears immediately after the OS boots. If a window covers the watermark, it does not show through the window. The non-evaluation watermark says "Activate Windows". It appears about 3 hours after booting. If a window covers the mark, it shows through the window.