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Old 06-20-2019, 10:36 AM   #1
Glennbo
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Planet Earth
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Default Windows 7 End of Life

I almost never boot into Windows any more, but I needed to check something over there today and when it came up, I got the "THREE DAYS TO ACTIVATE" message.

I was like, "what?!?!". I then thought that maybe because I pulled an old M-Audio Delta 2496 card and added a Behringer UMC1820 that the change might have tripped the trigger. Then I realized I had disabled the NIC since Windows 7 has only FIVE months left before it's end of life. So I enabled the card, activated, disabled the card, rebooted and again I got the three days to activate message.

Microsoft must have changed something in one of the recent updates because the Windows side of my machine has had the NIC disabled for almost a year with me only enabling it to grab monthly rollups. I had planned to get updates until the very end, but I think I am 100% done with it now.

I ended up having to do an offline activation where you speak 54 numbers to an automated system that then gives you 54 counter codes to activate. I re-booted again with the NIC disabled and this time could go into the system manager and verify that it was indeed activated with the NIC disabled.

Anyway, the point of this long winded tale is for the folks who plan to take Windows 7 offline before the official die date in January 2020. I'm glad I did the offline activation, because now my Windows 7 is frozen for the rest of time, and sitting on the back burner of my dual boot Xubuntu/Win7 DAW.
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