TimW wrote:
Despite having a desktop and a laptop with windows OEM serial stickers
on them, the last time I re installed Windows 7 Microsoft wouldn't
activate the OS on either one. Both are old machines and I think I had
used a pirate activation thing and they were black listed in some way.
the upshot was that I had windows7 installed but it refused to update in
any way. This was new MS policy I thought. They gave me a straight 'NO'
over the phone evn when I rang up with the correct serial.

It didn't bother me too much. It was around the time they were pushing
the whole world to move on to windows 10 but I was transitioning to
Linux Mint for different reasons already so W7 was a secondary OS on
dual boot only used occasionally for a couple of things I couldn't do
with linux.

But surprise! This week I started windows and it started updating. Not
sure if I was pleased or not because it took hours and had to be
rebooted three times, but is now fully updated again. Is this another
change in MS policy? Have they relented? What is going on here?

TW

You would need to know the mechanism being used.

http://techtoy.co.uk/pirating-window...the-right-way/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comm...der_vs_watfix/

It's possible your OS re-activated itself, using the
activator you loaded. If KMS checks every 180 days,
maybe your activator re-activated it ? It's also possible
it'll show as Not Genuine after the next time Windows
phones home or something.

You would need to consult with one of the sites that
invented this stuff, to get an opinion on "symptoms".

People used to brag about DAZ, as a means of bootstrapping
yourself to a Win10 Digital Entitlement. As with any "temporal"
topic, who really knows whether all the campers who did
that, are happy campers today.

Paul