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Microsoft stops activating Windows XP

N

norm8332

Experienced Member
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I "retro" game on many platforms and I recently discovered after a hard drive replacement that I cannot activate Windows XP! I thought microsoft stated that they would allow it to be activated for "it's useful life" then remove activation completely via a patch.

It looks like Microsoft may be going back on their word. This means that Windows XP will only work as long as your current hardware does because replacing a hard drive, video card etc. will make the activation window come up and that means your XP machine is basically bricked! This really ticks me off because I have a ton of games etc. on my XP machine that I can no longer play. What can be done? Please get the word out so maybe we can convince Microsoft to correct this.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-xp-onlinetelephone-activation/71676e93-90d6-4f7d-bbaf-a089238b6d9e
 
There was at least one other recent thread about that here.

The solution in that thread was simply to get a copy that doesn't require online activation.
 
norm8332 said:
then remove activation completely via a patch.
Click to expand...
Anyone who believed such about XP or similar about current/future products is a fool.

Microsoft has absolutely no reason to be generous about this, and plenty of reasons to magically prevent the "old" from working at all.

When/where exactly did they even make this alleged promise? Or was it just the echoes of those that wanted to believe it?

If they ever did say something like that, it was only to placate the masses. "Oh don't sue us over this new ball and chain we put in, we'll be fair about it when the time comes! We give you our Word(tm)! Which comes bundled with our web browser"

Anyway, I have been following several threads about this topic on different sites, and the results seem mixed.

Some say XP activates fine via telephone, some say it rejects XP as a product.

Some say they can activate over the internet while others say it fails.

At the very least, activating via Internet is known to require Service Pack 3, and Internet Explorer 8 before it will work. It may require additional updates. It also depends on Microsoft honoring any specific product key, which has always been hit and miss depending on if the key was ever "misused".

Even if it does work for any given day, the clock is ticking down. It would be nice to get some rock hard confirmation.
 
We had the same chat about Windows server 2003 a while back didn't we?

The way MS has been jumping through hoops to make people ditch all the older OS (even giving millions of Windows 7 pirates legit Windows 10) so they can concentrate on supporting only Windows 10 tells me it would be a cold day in hell for them to make XP usable again by taking out the activation. Then again Adobe gave out modified Creative Suite 2 CD images with serials so no activation was needed so hell might freeze over someday.
 
norm8332 said:
I thought microsoft stated that they would allow it to be activated for "it's useful life" then remove activation completely via a patch.
Click to expand...

Microsoft never claimed this, and none of the period reviews and accounts of XP activation I've found ever mentioned it.

I'd be curious how this misinformation came about, though, since I never heard it until the last few years, and I never heard it outside of communities similar to this one.

On the contrary, it seemed obvious in 2001 that Microsoft would refuse activation of XP once it passed out of support, and activation itself would serve as a strong-armed method of eliminating unsupported software from circulation. One only has to look at what else Microsoft was doing at the time to get this sense. XP's introduction coincided with Win95's revocation of support, and Redmond pulled out the stops to do virtually everything in its power to curtail the viability and desirability of that older operating system: Withholding it from OEMs, withholding IE 6 and WMP 7.1, releasing compilers and APIs rigged to break compatibility, promoting hardware standards incompatible with the OS, laying on intense pressure on other software vendors to drop Win95 from their system requirements lists, and so on.

I don't remember "support" ever being a issue in determining the viability of software until XP's introduction, but MS seemed to change the psyche of IT then and there.
 
Can Windows XP still be activated after April 8, 2014?
Windows XP can still be installed and activated after end of support. Computers running Windows XP will still work but they won’t receive any Microsoft Updates or be able to leverage technical support. Activations will still be required for retail installations of Windows XP after this date as well.
Click to expand...
taken from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/end-of-xp-support I don't see anything about MS removing activation requirements. I suspect someone may have confused Steam promises with MS promises. I doubt MS intended this to be a perpetual guarantee; 4.5 years of new installs after end of support seems like a fairly long term.

Lack of support was an issue preventing sales of some software. IBM had a difficult time moving copies of OS/2 Warp 4 after announcing the end of OS/2 development in spite of the announcement providing a 5 year coverage. Describe fairly cratered after its support preventing policies were announced.
 
There are other ways, such as using a copy of POSReady2009, which also doesn't require activation.

I've got a copy of WinFLP, but I don't recall if it requires activation.
 
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Another interesting point is the following: OK I understand what "unsupported" means, that I cannot expect updates and that MS is pushing people away from those unsupported versions.
But what about preventing me from using the product I bought? Legality of this is at least questionable.
 
It's very annoying, But like others have said there are ways around it, My daily internet driver is now a dirt cheap thin client running Ubuntu, I like XP and will continue to use it on my other PC's as i have old software that don't run on linux.
 
Chuck(G) said:
There are other ways, such as using a copy of POSReady2009, which also doesn't require activation.
Click to expand...

Apparently since August of this year POSReady 2009 updates require CPUs with SSE2 support. Not a problem if you're careful but it's something that users need to be aware of.
 
I can still activate XP over the phone at work. Or at lest hat was the case a few months back.
Another thing (other then cracks) is there are a few system files a reg keys you can scrap off a PC and moved them to a new one. I do not recall what all files and keys you have to backup. But I done it a few times when doing a reinstall in the past.
 
cthulhu said:
Apparently since August of this year POSReady 2009 updates require CPUs with SSE2 support. Not a problem if you're careful but it's something that users need to be aware of.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I think I've got POSReady running on a P3 and at least a K6. Never noticed the "You need SSE2" notices anywhere. However, finding up-to-date browsers for a P3 is getting to be a problem, so I do my browsing elsewhere. On another partition, I'm running Xubuntu 14.04 and I've had to turn off browser updates there just to run FFX.

I don't imagine that it will be too long before 64bit CPUs are a minimum requirement to run anything. PC BSD, for example has required AMD64 for some time.
 
Every update as of August of this year require the SSE2 instruction set in order for the performance to be nominal. I have XP installed on 4 systems: a desktop running on an Athlon 64 processor, and 3 laptops running on Pentium 4-based (Celeron, Centrino, and Pentium 4 itself) processors and all of them have the SSE2 instruction sets.
 
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