Your windows license will expire soon glitch.

Sliver · 10 Jun 2018 at 03:04

This is really annoying, I keep getting a message the my windows license will expire soon. Every 30 minutes or so. I just click it off. I've been on the web and there are a few sites claiming to solve it. I've followed their instructions but as usual, it's garbage and does not work.

Anyone know how to stop it?

Tefal · 10 Jun 2018 at 03:17

Insert your windows key.

On the back of your disk box, case or email depending where you bought windows.

Although given your recent issues are you sure this is legit?

Sliver · 10 Jun 2018 at 03:40

Tefal said:
Insert your windows key.

On the back of your disk box, case or email depending where you bought windows.

Although given your recent issues are you sure this is legit?

Yeah it's legit. If google it you will see many people have this problem.

Rroff · 10 Jun 2018 at 04:40

There was a spree of it 4-5 years ago when the authentication servers went on the fritz but I've not seen any reports of that being a problem currently.

Depending on version of Windows you are using you might be able to extend it using slmgr rearm temporarily until the problem is sorted if it is an issue on MS's end.

EDIT: Does it actually say your license will expire? one of my tablets keeps forgetting 1803 is installed and popping up a fullscreen modal dialogue that "critical" new updates are available and this version of Windows will "expire" soon - I'll try and get a screenshot next time it happens. (It is pretty annoying to say the least and definitely not malware, etc.).

Orionaut · 10 Jun 2018 at 08:25

The only reason really why I stick with M$ is games.

Everything else I use day to day would work just fine with Linux.

Once Steam gets its act in order, I dare say that M$ will find its stock tumbling!

paradigm · 10 Jun 2018 at 08:31

Orionaut said:
Once Steam gets its act in order, I dare say that M$ will find its stock tumbling!

Lol. As if you believe that gamers are a significant portion of Microsoft's sales. It's all business and enterprise, who couldn't give a stuff if steam works with a decent catalog of games or not.

Duke · 10 Jun 2018 at 10:22

Bonus points for still using a $ too there. I've not seen that for at least ten years!

Jimbeam3678 · 10 Jun 2018 at 11:29

Duke said:
Bonus points for still using a $ too there. I've not seen that for at least ten years!

I thought that as well, back in the nineties! If the key is legit just ring Microsoft and ask them.

Orionaut · 10 Jun 2018 at 15:19

paradigm said:
Lol. As if you believe that gamers are a significant portion of Microsoft's sales. It's all business and enterprise, who couldn't give a stuff if steam works with a decent catalog of games or not.

Home users are all about games/internet, Home users outnumber business 100:1 (Or more)

Cologne Linux scared the crap out of M$. To such an extent that, as I recall, M$ sent a plane load of executives over there to try to talk them out of it.

(Funnily enough, I dont seem to be able to find any links to it now)

A really effective open source alternative to Windows that would allow people to play games, use "Openoffice" and update facepalm would destroy M$ and they know it, THAT is why they have changed thioer business model. Sooner or later. M$ is going to have to make Windows free and try to make money via other routes..

V F · 10 Jun 2018 at 15:52

Duke said:
Bonus points for still using a $ too there. I've not seen that for at least ten years!

There was a forum, Neowin? back in the mid 00s used to ban people for using that.

asim18 · 11 Jun 2018 at 02:36

I think the revival of the infamous "M$" is totally justified. Windows has really gone downhill lately. Ever since Windows 8, its been downhill.

For example I just tried opening Excel app on my phone for the first time because I wanted to make a quick table. Then after 3 minutes it tells me I need to sign in with my Microsoft or I cant do anything anymore. They've turned into complete data leechers/forced harvesters. Sad thing is I cant even uninstall this app lmao what a complete sad state of affairs right now. Having apps forced down our throats so they can fake market stats. M$ actually pioneered this and they still do it with Candy Crush and Facebook lol it gets rammed down your throat whether you like it or not and then if you do ever decide to use it you need to sign in. Deary me the world of computers has just gone totally downhill since 2007ish.

m4cc45 · 11 Jun 2018 at 07:36

Not quite sure what Windows has got to do with phone apps. Candy Crush and Facebook are 3rd parties who have paid to have there apps advertised. You can turn this off by a reg setting. If you're using Microsoft apps then, of course, you're going to have to sign in. It's quite obvious really as it saves to the cloud and it's how licence activation is completed.

You say since Windows 8. I thought Windows 8 was the poorest of the lot. Windows 7 was brilliant and Windows 10, if you accept what it's actually doing, is a solid OS. I don't see Microsoft of being scared of anyone. They have shares in a hell of a lot of companies including Apple, etc. A linux OS just isn't anywhere near as compatible as a Microsoft one nor has the back catalogue of apps / games. It's also a new skill to learn when most people will find Windows much more intuitive.

People are right - Business is where they make the most of there money. It doesn't matter if millions of users are using Windows 10 (which was given away as a free upgrade). Yes they make money from advertising and telemetry but not much else. Business licencing with Office (on prem and O365), Server (Exchange, SharePoint, etc.) and clients are where they make the most of there money.

In regards to your question have you tried re-entering the key and re-activating it? If you're still having issues it sounds to be like it could be a MSDN key or such like where by the main account may have been suspended. Microsoft are the best people to contact and, if there is a problem with the key, re-issue it.

M.

Doogles · 11 Jun 2018 at 10:48

paradigm said:
Lol. As if you believe that gamers are a significant portion of Microsoft's sales. It's all business and enterprise, who couldn't give a stuff if steam works with a decent catalog of games or not.

I'd say that Gamers make at least 5% of Windows users though.

asim18 · 11 Jun 2018 at 21:14

m4cc45 said:
Not quite sure what Windows has got to do with phone apps. Candy Crush and Facebook are 3rd parties who have paid to have there apps advertised. You can turn this off by a reg setting.

I'm sorry but you are incorrect, Candy Crush and Facebook are not phone apps. They are certainly Windows apps and are certainly forcefully rammed to all Windows installations. In fact even if you uninstall, there have been cases of them getting remotely installed AGAIN lol. The fact that you need to delve into the registry and apply tweaks to stop unwanted interference doesn't magically mean Microsoft aren't pre loading apps/trying to fake market stats. You have gone a little non-sequitur.

m4cc45 said:
If you're using Microsoft apps then, of course, you're going to have to sign in. It's quite obvious really as it saves to the cloud and it's how licence activation is completed.

Again you are incorrect. You dont need to sign in order to save, you're just making excuses. It saved perfectly fine without sign in, locally for 5 minutes, and as soon as I opened the app to load the local file, it said I need to sign in to continue working with LOCAL files too. You've just obviously made an excuse and trying to justify data harvesting and sign-ins as a necessity of saving LOCAL files lol. Heck even after I sign in I can still edit and save files locally so your argument is totally not connected.

Also you are wrong yet again. It's got nothing to do with any Microsoft Office activation because this is just to use the FREE functions of the app without any licence purchase. But the point is even if you pay for Office 365 and its tied into your account then you're still going to have your data harvested lol. So again your argument doesn't actually refute any actual points I'm making.

m4cc45 said:
You say since Windows 8. I thought Windows 8 was the poorest of the lot. Windows 7 was brilliant and Windows 10, if you accept what it's actually doing, is a solid OS. I don't see Microsoft of being scared of anyone. They have shares in a hell of a lot of companies including Apple, etc. A linux OS just isn't anywhere near as compatible as a Microsoft one nor has the back catalogue of apps / games. It's also a new skill to learn when most people will find Windows much more intuitive.

Yes since and including windows 8. Windows 8 is poor but Windows 10 is just poorer. At least with Windows 8 you still got a bit of control over your OS and the business model was still selling licences as opposed to data harvesting, Windows 10 is just a full on adware/virus and many agree with me, they push one dodgy update and peoples systems become broken and it's been happening for years lol. In fact its one of the largest and most dangerous unmitigated threats in the history of computing. It behaves just like a spyware operation, it's been deployed just like a virus, using actual virus deployment tactics such as the infamous and well known GWX virus. They've completely gone from a business of selling licences, to harvesting people's data.

asim18 · 11 Jun 2018 at 21:24

Also, you say "they're paying to advertise their apps" trying to make it sound like it's just an innocent little advert.

No. Just no. Having an app installed in your system with absolutely no ability to uninstall the app, is not advertising lol. It's just not advertising I'm afraid.

I know Microsoft paying off phone manufacturers to force Apps without ability to uninstall is nothing to do with Windows lol. I'm just justifying the revival of "M$". You really do seem to be using a lot of non-sequitur arguments against my points.

m4cc45 · 12 Jun 2018 at 10:19

asim18 said:
I'm sorry but you are incorrect, Candy Crush and Facebook are not phone apps. They are certainly Windows apps and are certainly forcefully rammed to all Windows installations. In fact even if you uninstall, there have been cases of them getting remotely installed AGAIN lol. The fact that you need to delve into the registry and apply tweaks to stop unwanted interference doesn't magically mean Microsoft aren't pre loading apps/trying to fake market stats. You have gone a little non-sequitur.

You don't have to delve into the registry it's just easier. You can follow the following guide:
https://www.howtogeek.com/269331/how-to-disable-all-of-windows-10s-built-in-advertising/

asim18 said:
Again you are incorrect. You dont need to sign in order to save, you're just making excuses. It saved perfectly fine without sign in, locally for 5 minutes, and as soon as I opened the app to load the local file, it said I need to sign in to continue working with LOCAL files too. You've just obviously made an excuse and trying to justify data harvesting and sign-ins as a necessity of saving LOCAL files lol. Heck even after I sign in I can still edit and save files locally so your argument is totally not connected.

Apologies I missed the word web. If you're using Microsoft's web applications then you have to sign in. Any licenced product requires you to be signed in - I'm not sure what application you used to open it, assuming Word, then you need to sign in to validate teh licence.

asim18 said:
Also you are wrong yet again. It's got nothing to do with any Microsoft Office activation because this is just to use the FREE functions of the app without any licence purchase. But the point is even if you pay for Office 365 and its tied into your account then you're still going to have your data harvested lol. So again your argument doesn't actually refute any actual points I'm making.

When you sign in with your account it activates Office. It's also used to upload to Onedrive. It's also used to keep apps running on different devices (even Apple). All companies do this. Hell have a look at Google and Facebook if you want to see data harvesting. It's the world we live in where targeted advertising is where companies make money. Microsoft have given nigh on everyone a free upgrade to Windows 10 - did you really think there was nothing in it for them? Signing into an account makes it easier for them but gives benefits to the end user as well.

asim18 said:
Yes since and including windows 8. Windows 8 is poor but Windows 10 is just poorer. At least with Windows 8 you still got a bit of control over your OS and the business model was still selling licences as opposed to data harvesting, Windows 10 is just a full on adware/virus and many agree with me, they push one dodgy update and peoples systems become broken and it's been happening for years lol. In fact its one of the largest and most dangerous unmitigated threats in the history of computing. It behaves just like a spyware operation, it's been deployed just like a virus, using actual virus deployment tactics such as the infamous and well known GWX virus. They've completely gone from a business of selling licences, to harvesting people's data.

Even though it removed features such as the traditional start menu? It gave you less control for a good while (have a look at the classic start menu downloads for that period). They were still gathering data in Windows 8 and have been for a damn long while it was just that it wasn't as obvious. Please show me the: Windows 10 is just a full on adware/virus - and by show me I mean show me real evidence. The biggest threat in the history of computing, and will continue to be, is the end user. Nothing can stop people opening dodgy emails or doing something daft no matter how much you warn them. Nor can you stop them using admin accounts when they should be using normal accounts and elevating permissions when required. Microsoft has to release patches - if you're unpatched then you're vulnerable. There will be times when patches have to be rushed for critical bugs but I've never had an update break my PC. Normally because I patch a week later for non-critical updates.

Microsoft still sell software. The vision they have is move to cloud based offerings (i.e. Azure / O365) this is where they make there money.

Sorry if you don't like Windows then move away from it. Simple as that.

M.

Threepwood · 12 Jun 2018 at 10:39

^^ you can go one whole step further and kill windows B$ with this.

MagicBoy · 12 Jun 2018 at 10:53

What does "slmgr /dli" at the command line give?

Orionaut said:
The only reason really why I stick with M$ is games.

Everything else I use day to day would work just fine with Linux.

Once Steam gets its act in order, I dare say that M$ will find its stock tumbling!

I'll pick two holes in that one :
1) If I had a £1 for every time I'd heard that in the last ten years, I'd be a rich man. It's shown no sign of happening yet, so don't hold your breath...
2) 2/3rds of Microsofts revenue is from Enterprise customers if you include Azure. The stock price isn't tumbling anytime soon if the PC Master Race gamers go to Linux. Not that it's likely to go mainstream anytime soon. If at all.

Rroff · 13 Jun 2018 at 06:43

m4cc45 said:
Apologies I missed the word web. If you're using Microsoft's web applications then you have to sign in. Any licenced product requires you to be signed in - I'm not sure what application you used to open it, assuming Word, then you need to sign in to validate teh licence.

Thing is though people have to go through that even if they have no interest in that ecosystem - you have to wonder why - it is almost certainly because it allows them to fudge statistics that way and maybe hope to catch a few people out unwittingly.

m4cc45 said:
When you sign in with your account it activates Office. It's also used to upload to Onedrive. It's also used to keep apps running on different devices (even Apple). All companies do this. Hell have a look at Google and Facebook if you want to see data harvesting. It's the world we live in where targeted advertising is where companies make money. Microsoft have given nigh on everyone a free upgrade to Windows 10 - did you really think there was nothing in it for them? Signing into an account makes it easier for them but gives benefits to the end user as well.

That doesn't mean we should simply accept it and definitely no one should be advocating it or just living with it. Maybe some of us would rather pay for our Windows 10 outright and have proper control over what data we provide?

In many cases the examples of elsewhere you give aren't someone's desktop OS and in other situations a certain amount of data harvesting might be a bit more acceptable in terms of the functionality involved and you have far more control over using those services at all and/or what data you give them if you wish (though many people it seems don't exercise that ability and then are outraged when they find the company has 100s of MB of data on them).