Microsoft disables yet another offline Windows activation option, pushing online only
Microsoft has reportedly ended support for phone-based product activation in Windows and Office, quietly discontinuing a longstanding option for users without internet access. This change appears to affect Windows 11, Windows 10, and even Windows 7, removing the ability to complete activation by phone.
Although Microsoft support articles still describe an “Activate by Phone” option in Windows Settings, users say calling the activation number now triggers an automated message that redirects them to the Microsoft Product Activation Portal at aka.ms/aoh. Instead of providing an activation code by phone, the process appears to be pushed to a web based flow, leaving the old offline path unusable.
The change has been discussed in user forums and shown in a video from an user, but official documentation has not yet been updated to match. It also aligns with Microsoft’s broader push toward internet dependent setup and activation, including tighter restrictions on OOBE workflows that previously allowed more offline or local account routes.
- Operating System
- Paid • Proprietary
Related news
External links
- Microsoft silently kills Windows and Office phone activation and forces online activation with a Microsoft account — Windows users are now herded into an online-only portal for activationTom's Hardware
- Microsoft kills Windows operating system activation by phone optionCybernews
- Microsoft quietly kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internetNeowin
Comments
Not activating Windows doesn't prevent using any software or getting security updates, but basically just changing wallpaper.
And since Windows 11 requires an online account, it makes perfectly sense to use internet to activate it.
So it may be one of the most sensible decisions from Microsoft in the past years. Even it won't unravel all its recent nonsense, it clearly doesn't deserve all the hate below, and also look at OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Flock and such.
This is part of what Microsoft doesn't want it printed: layoffs (1, 2, 3), which meant the phone activation division was probably hit, just after their CEO, Nadella, urged people to stop calling bullshit generators (1, 2, 3) "slop" (1, 2, 3).
And yes, being malware, Microsoft products also have the defective-by-design "you own nothing and be happy" (1, 2, 3) apparatus built-in (remember Windows Genuine (sic) Advantage? It was one of those). Now, with further enshittification to go online-only, BlimpTV was proven correct about their "Sinkhole of Support" prediction in their "VISTA SUCKS" video.
Speaking of "Sinkhole of Support", Brian Valentine publicly stated that Microsoft products are NOT engineerd for end-users' security (1, 2, [3](https://techrights.org/search/query?search=Search&set1=any&query1="our products just aren't engineered for security")), but instead, NSA, ICE (1, 2, 3), and recently, He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named. This is a blatant Nationalism-as-a-Service with the end goal to control the end-users and avoid any accountability (the chat control scheme) so reject any proprietary products as soon as you can: here are the Windows and Office 365 "alternatives" (sic).
It's time for linux to get a huge boost and be a real competitor to windows. The main reason I do not use Linux is because (atleast on my laptop) , hardware does not support it. When the time comes and my laptop does support it , I will install ZorinOS without batting an eyelid.
Linux has more issues than hardware support. Im no expert so excuse me if I make some mistakes below but the OS is a failure in design regardless of distro. Both Windows and MacOS have hybrid kernels for a reason. It just is far more stable where a driver crash doesn't break the whole system. Only FOSS with that is DragonflyBSD and that is geared for servers not desktops and has an experimental file system. The package management in Linux has no standard other than every single one being counter intuitive having a package manager do things like sandboxing when the OS itself probably should be doing that and they do not even all do that much. The package have no standard so hardly any software developer or game developer wants to release on Linux when it can only work on some distros and not others so focus always only goes to one or maybe two distros. The file hierarchy is counter intuitive except on GoboLinux. Releasing program updates with the operating system on some distros often leads to outdated insecure programs being installed by default. And so on ...
Microsoft's actions really do not make any sense. This obviously is not going to improve their profits but hurt it. This only makes sense if they have gone full on controlled by the US government at this point but there is better ways to install backdoors than using a Microsoft account so what even is the end goal? Cloud computing as a service?