I'm a bit affraid about what will happen in the time coming. It may be a bit exaggerating, but it will for sure happen in maybe a less terrible way. My prediction is that ar least 5 "activation exploids" will pop up out of nothing. Most of them aren't well tested, as the creators are in a rush to push it out and provide everyone their Windows 8 candy. KMS exploids will be pretty harmless, but there will also be plenty of frankenbuild and file tempering tools. A lot of people here and on other forums know they must be careful applying these, and make backups of every file changed before playing with these things. Unfortunately the majority of people are the ones who just downloaded a loader, mostly Daz's loader, which was already stable and well tested by the time they found out about it. Or they got if from a techie cousin or friend. These are the people who have only seen the "1 click and no worries" side of the whole process. Also a lot of people weren't there with previous windows versions, and for them this is probably all new. Lots of people will now want to use Windows 8 and are looking for tools to crack or activate it. They'll google around, end up here or on other places and try the first tool they find. If it doesn't work they try the next one, and their whole OS will start bugging and break down. Then they'll come to here to ask for help. Half the world will be freaking out, either helping victims or being a victim themself. This slows down the development of the good and reliable tools as well. So please, to everyone attempting to have a working Windows 8: - Read the description of the tool you want to use very (very very very) carefully. Make sure you roughly know how it works and what it does. - Read the threads and make sure you know which side effects and problems might occur after using it. - Keep an eye on the thread or other place where the tool is officially maintained and developed by the developer(s). Updates will be provided there (very frequently at the beginning). You'll be notified there if the developer stops supporting it. - Don't use the first tool you find. Preferably use KMS/rearm solutions. If they don't exist or don't work, then use frankenbuild and file tempering solutions. Beware the the last 2 are doomed to cause problems in the future, unless updated with every update there is, but still then... So compare the tools and find out which works best. Maybe even more important is to see which developer is the most dedicated and supporting for his solution. - The most important one: never install more than 1 thing at once. Every method should be used on a clean virgin system. Have you done something activation related previously? -> Uninstall it, revert all changes, make sure everything activation related is as clean as it was before! If the tool has no uninstall option (or one that doesn't work like RemoveWAT), make sure you find out by yourself what it does. Backup all files and changes before you install it so you can revert manually. I'm pretty sure this won't stop the all the trouble, but I can at least attempt to reduce it a bit. Also a request to the developers: Document your tool well and try to provide a working uninstall option.
Thanks for this, it'll help the team to keep things organized and avoids to get a mess. The MDL team is already prepared to keep approaches away from the forums which cause rather a mess than a proof of concept. Add: No frankenbuild solutions will be approved.
I'm no noob but read this out of curiosity, this is just common sense really... but noobs will be noobs.
From what I've seen I think it will be only possible to activate the enterprise version by some method as all other SKU's are strictly online activation only.
My organization has Software Assurance on our 2008R2 datacenter servers so I will be building out the KMS infrastructure that will activate Win8, and won't be participating in any of that other foolishness.
Well... There's a Greek saying: 'patience is virtue' -but I don't have this virtue, unfortunately. Nevertheless, I trust this forum and its members; especially the responsible ones who run it. As Yen said, I hope we won't be able to download something that might break our installations and even worse... I'm using Daz Loader almost since the beginning... I'm with the lucky ones who picked the good one. If Daz won't release anything, I'll truly try to be patient.
So you are blessed with a good organization, I must look for a workaround, because I want to use Windows To Go
let´s hope win8 will be a gigantic flop. the whole metro idea is a joke for desktop users. hell an upgrade to win8 is so cheap i would even buy win8... if i only would think it´s worth it. but i will not even use it for free as long as i have no startmenu and microsoft forces this metro crap on me. it´s kind of sad... win8 seems to be a bit faster then win7 but as a 100% desktop user i can´t live with metro. it´s useless for me... absolutely useless.
No matter what they say, the fact that you've to change your screen just to search something, it's extremely annoying. I don't like either that the Start Menu gone, I can't disable Metro etc. Believe it or not, I wanna try it just because... I really like the Desktop Design... I hate the 'glitchy' rounded/curved corners on Win 7 and I love the squared on Win 8. It looks more solid and professional in my eyes. Yes, I know, many think otherwise, but that's just me and probably it's the wrong reason to jump on another OS. Your hope is the reason that MS certainly won't lock pirates out. MS wants many users to jump on 8 and thus, I strongly believe deliberately or not, a hole will be found by the jackals around here.
Based on Yen's explanations, it seems like there will be two options: Activation occurs by spoofing a valid authenticating server (KMS) Activation occurs by Creating an effective means by which to convert a Server edition of Windows 8 into a Client one, the reason being that the Server Editions continue to make use of the offline SLIC authentication mechanism we've all come to know and love for the ease of bypassing it. Anything else out there will cause mayhem and should be avoided.
With that second option, I guess you could not use/loose access to App store and few other things when you convert a Server edition of Windows 8 into a Client one...
Every year, during the start of the new windows OS we have the same problem. It's something that will always be there will be part of this world activation.
@stannieman maybe you should have suggested to use a virtual machine before they try it on their real systems and make snapshots before they install anything
I didn't know that Microsoft released a new OS every year, what did Microsoft call the ones they released in 2010 & 2011 Windows 7 1/2, & Windows 7 2/3 then they finally came out with Windows 8 ?
I hate windows8 more than any OS till date, it looks like a mess of all OS(ios,android,wphone), all the concentration has gone mobility/ touch.......... as far as this goes, this forum is the most reliable source... im following this forum from vista days. Lets see what Microsoft has for us on table.