Nil wrote:
On 02 Feb 2019, Paul wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

I have a copy of Windows 10 in a VM (where it would not have seen
a qualifying OS), and it just shows the watermark in the corner
every once in a while. I haven't noticed it do a spontaneous
reboot, like in the old days. I have a copy of expired Windows 7
that *does* reboot (it's an Enterprise SKU in a VM you can
download from Microsoft, that I run in VPC2007).

I have an unregistered copy of Win10 in a Virtualbox VM. It doesn't
do the reboot thing, and I don't think it ever will. As far as I can
tell it will run forever will most or all features working except
for any personalization - you can't change wallpaper or colors or
any of the visual customization stuff.

That's my impression too. That it's not nearly as aggressive
on activation issues as other OSes were.

The problem with most analysis of Windows 10 behavior, is
the "time horizon" issue. Many things on Windows 10, they
could come back to haunt you. How many days must you test,
to see whether a policy is in place ? I've tried to do
"Auto Upgrade" tests here, and not once has Windows Update
offered to upgrade a test case for me like it should.
Not once! I can leave setups configured for three months,
and boot them up occasionally, and the HDD installations (not VMs)
are just ignored like they weren't there.

That makes it pretty hard to reach any conclusions about
what a Microsoft policy might be, using test cases as
evidence. For example, I have an install set up right now
at 17134, where I disabled DOSVC using GPEDIT, and throttled
BITS (the original transport for Windows Update) to reduce
the number of connections if a Windows Upgrade is coming in.
It seems to be able to do Windows Update OK, but it doesn't
seem to want to upgrade the OS for me.

Maybe I should switch to one of my Insider setups and
abuse it and do tests with it. Because the Insider is
pretty relentless when a new version comes out.

Paul