Microsoft will give you VM windows machines. Lab copies are available, good for up to 180 days.
I used to use them regularly for demos and such. Also good for development.
If MS gives away copies, fine. It just doesn't seem right to me to circumvent their license agreement. If you don't like their terms don't use their product.
Hmm - two days work, even with long night session. so 15-20 hours?
Ripping keys - install older version - sure a hard way to do it.
Even with just US minimum wage that are $200. Why not just buy W10 pro for $199 and be done with it?
just curious,
OK, let me explain...
1) Yes it took a long time. Of course I was busy doing other things whilst waiting for downloads, cds to burn, updates to happen, etc, etc.
Googling around to find out how to do all this took time of course. That was just my curiosity as to how this Windows world works now a days. I'm curious that way some times.
2) This machine has a fully paid up, activated, licence for Windows 7. So I think it's all legit and above board to make a fresh installation of Win 7 on it. MS agrees because they activated it when it was done.
3) The next step is not so clear but as I used MS tools to upgrade the thing to Win 10 and MS activated that as well I assume that is all legit and above board. There was no trickery on my part going on there.
4) Yes, I had to hack the old users passwords and then once in the machine decrypt the installation key. But that is only because that installation key is usually on a blue sticker stuck to the side of the PC for all the world to read. In this case the sticker was damaged and illegible.
5) Paying out 200 bucks for an OS that has already been paid for is nuts. Even if it is not much money it's like buying 50 beers for a stranger just because they ask. Would you do that? If so I'd like to meet you
I would have been happy with only the refresh of Win 7 if it were not possible to move on.
6) All of this was a challenge to whatever nerd skills I have left. How could one resist?
7) I was dead in the water Windows wise because my 2000 dollars worth of Surface Pro exploded and has so far not been fixed or replaced. I'm not in a mood to shell out more cash.
Calling cracking windows licensing 'educational' is alike asking for shop-lifting classes in public schools.
To be clear. There was no "cracking windows licensing" going on here. There were no locks being picked that should not be picked. I'm not that much of a leet hacker. And I'd rather not use Windows at all than steal it.
Microsoft will give you... is different from I can steal from MS.
where is the harm? impacting real people is one thing. Big corporations is not?
So shoplifting at Walmart is OK, but not at the Mum and Pop Store. OK How about my Plummer, he has a couple of crews working, steal OK yes/no?
How about Franchiser, do you steal from the Big Company Starbucks or from the independent running store owner who even has to pay Big Company Franchise fees for what you stole. OK yes/no?
Is it OK to steal Radios out of Mercedes Roadsters, but not if it is a Saturn?
You are working at a startup. How many millions to burn? OK to steal from them or not?
Where do you - ethically or morally - draw the line where it is WRONG to cheat and steal and where it is OK?
In my clear and simple opinion it is wrong to steal at all. All things I own I worked for, fought for and care about. Like you (as you mentioned over the years in your posts), I grew up quite poor and started working very early in my life, the reason for my first job was that I wanted some own, new trousers, not just the stuff handed down by my older sisters.
On the other hand, over the last 55 years of my life a lot got stolen from me. Does that make it OK when I start stealing from other people and if so, why?
In case of @Heater, he should HAVE a W10 license from his surface Pro, does that make it right to install a temporary Machine while his is in repair/replacement? Yes, no and why?
If somebody 'steals your identity' you don't loose anything, so it is no theft? And if the first damage arrives in form of loans to cars you never had, THEN it is harm? Where do you draw the line?
Hey guys, what is going on here? My little story seems to have opened a whole ethical debate about "ownership" and "theft" etc, etc.
Reality is:
0) Let's forget about my Surface Pro and it's Win 10 license. That is a different machine.
1) I did not steal the actual computer. I have permission to use it in perpetuity.
2) Yes I hacked the passwords to get in and yes I decrypted the installation key from there. With permission from the company that gave me the machine. Call it lock picking with permission. That installation key is generally publicized on the side of the box anyway.
3) I did not steal the Win 7 fresh installation. That machine had Win 7 installed already. Creating recovery media is totally supported by MS.
4) Yes I upgraded it to Win 10. This might be a grey area but:
a) MS supplies the tool to do this from their web site.
b) Having done so MS activated the new Win 10 install.
In my mind I have done no stealing or harm here.
Perhaps, possibly, maybe, if I read the fine print of the license agreements one click's through I might find a reason why I should not be doing this. Who ever does that?
No, this computer has been talking to their computer and their computer said everything is OK.
I know exactly what you did. Its a path they left open. No worries. MS people will tell others about it.
Yes, MS stopped pushing the free upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 some time ago. But they left the path open.
MS people don't need to tell each other. They already know.
Question might be, why did they leave the path open?
I cannot believe it's an oversight on their part. It's been discussed all around the net for ages.
No, I think they are very happy that they can now use Win 10 to tempt me with their App Store, Office365, One Drive and whatever other cloud services they have. Now and in the future.
Meanwhile, I have to jump though all these hoops or shell out cash, as msrobots suggests, just to be able to use a couple of stupid Win only tools that companies have made to talk to their hardware devices.
sorry for this, but I am dense lately, you know like Arthur Dent asking for a simple cup of tea and not getting it.
In one of your posts lately you mentioned our Editor project. I had some Idea alike this, but more fundamental.
There are all those tools out now for P2, made by our beloved forum members. fastspin, spinsim, etc. All written in C/C++ and able to be emscripten transpiled to JS in the browser.
It worked for OpenSpin, so it should work for SpinSim also?
At work, we like all PCs to be setup the same...
W10 Pro, Office 365, etc.
When we get new PCs (we use Dell) they come with W10 Pro. I've setup a few recently. First update to latest W10 release. Next remove the stupid Office promo as a real Office 365 doesn't remove the promo properly!!! Install Office 365.
Next install Chrome, make it the default. Then make IE11 and Edge use Google instead of Bing. What a nightmare. Every Win update breaks the old way to use Google!!! It's a deliberate attempt to stop people changing from Bing. Even the link to MS to change the search engine is broken.
From time to time I think about getting back to the OpenSpin in the browser with your editor. I had not considered the other tools.
Just now my heart is not in it. I have a hundred other half baked projects cluttering my mind and not much enthusiasm for any of them. Then the P2 will arrive soon and that will be another diversion...
Same model as my old one but it looks like a totally new unit not a refurbished one. Not a dent, scratch or scuff on it.
As Steve Bullmer famously said of Microsoft "I love this company". I mean really, a new replacement machine for one that was over two years old, that is unheard of. At least for me.
I'm running around doing his monkey dance just now:
As Steve Bullmer famously said of Microsoft "I love this company". I mean really, a new replacement machine for one that was over two years old, that is unheard of. At least for me.
I guess you've never had trouble with a Parallax product?
Same model as my old one but it looks like a totally new unit not a refurbished one. Not a dent, scratch or scuff on it.
As Steve Bullmer famously said of Microsoft "I love this company". I mean really, a new replacement machine for one that was over two years old, that is unheard of. At least for me.
I'm running around doing his monkey dance just now:
That is the strange thing kwinn. I deleted Windows and went Linux only in 1998.
It's only two and a half years ago I got this Win 10 Surface Pro, after some arm twisting from work and them paying for it.
I kind of got stuck on it. Not just because I had to use some old Windows only programs for work purposes but because it has the Linux Subsystem for Windows which meant I could actually get something useful done on it.
And of course all my favorites from the Linux world run on it as well, Chrome, Firefox, Inkscape, GIMP, etc, etc.
Sometimes I forget that it is a Windows machine.
Meanwhile, Bullmer's claim, back in the day, that Open Source is a "cancer" has changed to MS supporting it more and more. See Visual Studio Code for example.
Long gone are the days of downloading an ISO, installing it, and booting up a working up to date system.
Not quite...
One can install a Debian, Ubuntu or whatever Linux system from an image download, via CD, DVD, USB stick, net boot, in a fraction of the time. Including all subsequent updates.
Such an installation will then run Chrome, Firefox, Inkscape, GIMP, LTSpice, Quartus, ItelliJ, SimpleIDE and all manner of things that one wants, just as well as Win 10.
Why don't I do that then? Good question. Originally it was because I had my arm twisted to get a machine that could run some legacy Windows applications.
Then I don't know how well a Surface Pro 4 supports a Linux OS.
Anyway, after decades of being away I'm kind of curious to see what has happened in Windows world.
In posts above I describe acquiring a Win 7 PC and upgrading it to Win 10. The deal was I remove the hard drives and return them to the former user. So I replaced them with the SSD from my old Linux PC. I backed up that SSD to a 4TB USB hard drive before doing the Win 7 install and Win 10 upgrade. I used a live Knoppix Linux CD to write the files to the NTFS formatted USB drive,
Now I find that plugging that USB drive in a Win 10 machine, the big PC or my Surface Pro, it will not read the directory containing my backup. Complaining that it is corrupted. Oh shoot!
However, booting into that Knoppix Linux again I find it can read everything on that NTFS drive just fine.
In posts above I describe acquiring a Win 7 PC and upgrading it to Win 10. The deal was I remove the hard drives and return them to the former user. So I replaced them with the SSD from my old Linux PC. I backed up that SSD to a 4TB USB hard drive before doing the Win 7 install and Win 10 upgrade. I used a live Knoppix Linux CD to write the files to the NTFS formatted USB drive,
Now I find that plugging that USB drive in a Win 10 machine, the big PC or my Surface Pro, it will not read the directory containing my backup. Complaining that it is corrupted. Oh shoot!
However, booting into that Knoppix Linux again I find it can read everything on that NTFS drive just fine.
Hello!
Yes sadly Heater, Windows can and will behave in a fashion that resembles small children.
Incidentally regarding your contraption, and why it did that, the original one that is, there were rumors that machines sold or otherwise made available to certain people who live where you are, were allowed to pack a "black capsule" along with their regular utilities, in hopes that they would not be needed. They thought the events would be painless.
---
And incidentally this message is being sponsored by the historic lemmings march club.
Comments
1) Yes it took a long time. Of course I was busy doing other things whilst waiting for downloads, cds to burn, updates to happen, etc, etc.
Googling around to find out how to do all this took time of course. That was just my curiosity as to how this Windows world works now a days. I'm curious that way some times.
2) This machine has a fully paid up, activated, licence for Windows 7. So I think it's all legit and above board to make a fresh installation of Win 7 on it. MS agrees because they activated it when it was done.
3) The next step is not so clear but as I used MS tools to upgrade the thing to Win 10 and MS activated that as well I assume that is all legit and above board. There was no trickery on my part going on there.
4) Yes, I had to hack the old users passwords and then once in the machine decrypt the installation key. But that is only because that installation key is usually on a blue sticker stuck to the side of the PC for all the world to read. In this case the sticker was damaged and illegible.
5) Paying out 200 bucks for an OS that has already been paid for is nuts. Even if it is not much money it's like buying 50 beers for a stranger just because they ask. Would you do that? If so I'd like to meet you
I would have been happy with only the refresh of Win 7 if it were not possible to move on.
6) All of this was a challenge to whatever nerd skills I have left. How could one resist?
7) I was dead in the water Windows wise because my 2000 dollars worth of Surface Pro exploded and has so far not been fixed or replaced. I'm not in a mood to shell out more cash. To be clear. There was no "cracking windows licensing" going on here. There were no locks being picked that should not be picked. I'm not that much of a leet hacker. And I'd rather not use Windows at all than steal it.
Microsoft will give you... is different from I can steal from MS.
where is the harm? impacting real people is one thing. Big corporations is not?
So shoplifting at Walmart is OK, but not at the Mum and Pop Store. OK How about my Plummer, he has a couple of crews working, steal OK yes/no?
How about Franchiser, do you steal from the Big Company Starbucks or from the independent running store owner who even has to pay Big Company Franchise fees for what you stole. OK yes/no?
Is it OK to steal Radios out of Mercedes Roadsters, but not if it is a Saturn?
You are working at a startup. How many millions to burn? OK to steal from them or not?
Where do you - ethically or morally - draw the line where it is WRONG to cheat and steal and where it is OK?
In my clear and simple opinion it is wrong to steal at all. All things I own I worked for, fought for and care about. Like you (as you mentioned over the years in your posts), I grew up quite poor and started working very early in my life, the reason for my first job was that I wanted some own, new trousers, not just the stuff handed down by my older sisters.
On the other hand, over the last 55 years of my life a lot got stolen from me. Does that make it OK when I start stealing from other people and if so, why?
In case of @Heater, he should HAVE a W10 license from his surface Pro, does that make it right to install a temporary Machine while his is in repair/replacement? Yes, no and why?
If somebody 'steals your identity' you don't loose anything, so it is no theft? And if the first damage arrives in form of loans to cars you never had, THEN it is harm? Where do you draw the line?
curious,
Mike
Reality is:
0) Let's forget about my Surface Pro and it's Win 10 license. That is a different machine.
1) I did not steal the actual computer. I have permission to use it in perpetuity.
2) Yes I hacked the passwords to get in and yes I decrypted the installation key from there. With permission from the company that gave me the machine. Call it lock picking with permission. That installation key is generally publicized on the side of the box anyway.
3) I did not steal the Win 7 fresh installation. That machine had Win 7 installed already. Creating recovery media is totally supported by MS.
4) Yes I upgraded it to Win 10. This might be a grey area but:
a) MS supplies the tool to do this from their web site.
b) Having done so MS activated the new Win 10 install.
In my mind I have done no stealing or harm here.
Perhaps, possibly, maybe, if I read the fine print of the license agreements one click's through I might find a reason why I should not be doing this. Who ever does that?
No, this computer has been talking to their computer and their computer said everything is OK.
Did I do something bad here?
MS people don't need to tell each other. They already know.
Question might be, why did they leave the path open?
I cannot believe it's an oversight on their part. It's been discussed all around the net for ages.
No, I think they are very happy that they can now use Win 10 to tempt me with their App Store, Office365, One Drive and whatever other cloud services they have. Now and in the future.
No joke. It is cheap investment.
No worries for us. Use it, do not use it. MS does not care.
Meanwhile, I have to jump though all these hoops or shell out cash, as msrobots suggests, just to be able to use a couple of stupid Win only tools that companies have made to talk to their hardware devices.
It's all really annoying.
sorry for this, but I am dense lately, you know like Arthur Dent asking for a simple cup of tea and not getting it.
In one of your posts lately you mentioned our Editor project. I had some Idea alike this, but more fundamental.
There are all those tools out now for P2, made by our beloved forum members. fastspin, spinsim, etc. All written in C/C++ and able to be emscripten transpiled to JS in the browser.
It worked for OpenSpin, so it should work for SpinSim also?
Some time for another endeavor?
Mike
W10 Pro, Office 365, etc.
When we get new PCs (we use Dell) they come with W10 Pro. I've setup a few recently. First update to latest W10 release. Next remove the stupid Office promo as a real Office 365 doesn't remove the promo properly!!! Install Office 365.
Next install Chrome, make it the default. Then make IE11 and Edge use Google instead of Bing. What a nightmare. Every Win update breaks the old way to use Google!!! It's a deliberate attempt to stop people changing from Bing. Even the link to MS to change the search engine is broken.
From time to time I think about getting back to the OpenSpin in the browser with your editor. I had not considered the other tools.
Just now my heart is not in it. I have a hundred other half baked projects cluttering my mind and not much enthusiasm for any of them. Then the P2 will arrive soon and that will be another diversion...
Same model as my old one but it looks like a totally new unit not a refurbished one. Not a dent, scratch or scuff on it.
As Steve Bullmer famously said of Microsoft "I love this company". I mean really, a new replacement machine for one that was over two years old, that is unheard of. At least for me.
I'm running around doing his monkey dance just now:
Scary isn't it?
Yeah, I know, they got to me.
Mind you have only bough naked DIP Props and some sensors. I don't recall managing to blow any of them up yet.
Yep, scary. Sooo happy I switched to Linux.
It's only two and a half years ago I got this Win 10 Surface Pro, after some arm twisting from work and them paying for it.
I kind of got stuck on it. Not just because I had to use some old Windows only programs for work purposes but because it has the Linux Subsystem for Windows which meant I could actually get something useful done on it.
And of course all my favorites from the Linux world run on it as well, Chrome, Firefox, Inkscape, GIMP, etc, etc.
Sometimes I forget that it is a Windows machine.
Meanwhile, Bullmer's claim, back in the day, that Open Source is a "cancer" has changed to MS supporting it more and more. See Visual Studio Code for example.
I do wonder what their game is sometimes....
Guess I cannot guarantee my DIP8 P1 works though - no I/O to test it
Long gone are the days of downloading an ISO, installing it, and booting up a working up to date system.
One can install a Debian, Ubuntu or whatever Linux system from an image download, via CD, DVD, USB stick, net boot, in a fraction of the time. Including all subsequent updates.
Such an installation will then run Chrome, Firefox, Inkscape, GIMP, LTSpice, Quartus, ItelliJ, SimpleIDE and all manner of things that one wants, just as well as Win 10.
Why don't I do that then? Good question. Originally it was because I had my arm twisted to get a machine that could run some legacy Windows applications.
Then I don't know how well a Surface Pro 4 supports a Linux OS.
Anyway, after decades of being away I'm kind of curious to see what has happened in Windows world.
So far I'm amazed how people put up with this.
A Linux install is still just a reboot away...
In posts above I describe acquiring a Win 7 PC and upgrading it to Win 10. The deal was I remove the hard drives and return them to the former user. So I replaced them with the SSD from my old Linux PC. I backed up that SSD to a 4TB USB hard drive before doing the Win 7 install and Win 10 upgrade. I used a live Knoppix Linux CD to write the files to the NTFS formatted USB drive,
Now I find that plugging that USB drive in a Win 10 machine, the big PC or my Surface Pro, it will not read the directory containing my backup. Complaining that it is corrupted. Oh shoot!
However, booting into that Knoppix Linux again I find it can read everything on that NTFS drive just fine.
Hello!
Yes sadly Heater, Windows can and will behave in a fashion that resembles small children.
Incidentally regarding your contraption, and why it did that, the original one that is, there were rumors that machines sold or otherwise made available to certain people who live where you are, were allowed to pack a "black capsule" along with their regular utilities, in hopes that they would not be needed. They thought the events would be painless.
---
And incidentally this message is being sponsored by the historic lemmings march club.