It has finally happened. HWID activation for Windows 10/11 has been patched by Microsoft after 6 years.

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 If you’re still using outdated activation methods and you missed out on this, I’m sorry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.

hogart,
@hogart@feddit.nu avatar

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.

Xirup,
@Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

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.

hogart,
@hogart@feddit.nu avatar

Yes I’ve been using Parsec for quite some time. Love it. Doesn’t work as host on Linux.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

I guess Microsoft didn’t like that their support staff cracks Windows with HWID activation using MAS when their infrastructure breaks down for legit licenses.

hypevhs,

Is kmspico still ok?

Draconic_NEO,

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.

IzzyData,
@IzzyData@lemmy.ml avatar

I should really switch over to Linux full time. I basically have no uses cases that require Windows anymore. Not that this activation patch tipped me over the edge or anything. Microsoft is allowed to fix bugs in their software.

raven,

I think they were for a number of reasons tactically “not fixing” this “bug” up to this point.

Microsoft has always been something of a free nagware business model, like WinRAR.

IzzyData,
@IzzyData@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve managed to never pay for Windows my whole life despite using legitimate copies since Windows XP. I guess I probably paid for XP through the hardware OEM, but I got Vista from University and then Win 7 and Microsoft has somehow let me upgrade that version all the way to Win 11. 😅

But if I ever actually had to pay for it I’d likely just switch to Linux forever.

CalcProgrammer1,
@CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml avatar

Do it!

redcalcium,

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.

yum13241,

Does the Lockbox method not work? Normally MAS uses Downlevel.

vildis, (edited )

Possibly(?) related official notice …microsoft.com/…/comm-windows-ends-installation-p…

Never spent the time to figure out what KMS actually did but seems like licenses weren’t validated when upgrading from 7 -> 8 / 11

ZeroEcks,

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.

NateSwift,

—-I haven’t used windows in a while, but for curiosity’s sake what are the best ways for registering windows now?—-

edit: i’m bad at reading, muses the relevant line

Album,
@Album@lemmy.ca avatar

RIP. We hardly knew ye.

lickmysword,

RIP HWID

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