In the past, OEMs have activated Windows at the factory. Therefore, as long as the OEM machine is used, the user has already obtained the "activated" open box experience without excessive operation.
Today, Windows 8 upgrades OEM Activation technology to version 3.0 to prevent traditional bypassing activation by emulating OEM BIOS information. That's right, this one must be added to the online verification mechanism.
In the new OA 3.0 activation technology, a series of new technical details are adopted. Here, for the purpose of technical discussion, we will briefly talk about the new OA 3.0 process: (The specific details are inconvenient to disclose )
1. OEMs will get some product keys from Microsoft;
2. OEMs will inject the acquired product keys into the firmware of each PC when manufacturing the PC;
3. The OEM manufacturer will generate a "computer manufacturing report" from the PC that has been manufactured and infused with the key, which will contain the ID corresponding to the key, the hardware hash, and other necessary information;
4. The OEM will deliver the computer manufacturing report to Microsoft. Microsoft will bind the unique hardware identification information of each PC to the ID corresponding to the injected key and write it to the service database of Microsoft Online Activation Service.
5 The user purchased a new OEM PC with pre-installed genuine Win8;
6. After the user turned on, after a few hours, Windows tried to silently contact the Windows activation server via the network and successfully activated (does not interfere with the user). If you are not connected to the network, you will be prompted to activate the phone.
In fact, starting from Vista, Microsoft's activation has been upgraded to a new technical architecture level. Users who are generally consuming Windows boxed software can only be activated by a key, and can no longer replace some local files. And information to bypass the activation service without affecting the health of the system. It is only a means of relaxation for the OEM PC and is activated at the factory. With the release of Windows 8, this situation has been improved, and cracking the activation of Windows 8 is difficult to achieve. Some of the activation methods previously transmitted on the Internet are nothing more than activation using a legitimate leak key, or an enterprise-level KMS server, or phone activation for activation purposes, rather than a real crack for OA 3.0. However, on the one hand, users should gradually realize the intellectual property rights of software and its intangible value, and legally purchase genuine software; on the other hand, Microsoft and large companies that have signed legal agreements with Microsoft should pay attention to protecting property and avoid similar disclosure. The event happened again.
For OA 3.0, as you can see from the above steps, there may be some new problems, for example:
1. PC manufacturers are eager to produce and sell PCs, causing users to report after receiving the PC. The computer manufacturing report has not yet been imported into the activation database by Microsoft, which may result in the user receiving a prompt that the key information is invalid;
2. The PC manufacturer sent the wrong PC manufacturing report or the report contains "hardware information-key information " One-to-many, many-to-one error. In this case, for the computer with the same key, the activation is recognized first, and the reward for the attempt to activate is received incorrectly;
3. The user's machine is broken, and the OEM has replaced the keyless information for it. New motherboard, users will not be able to activate Windows 8.
However, for the above situation, Microsoft and the manufacturer's customer service staff will help the user to solve.
Today, it is more convenient to view activation information in the system information in Win8, and for reasons that cannot be activated, the system will also report its detailed status and specific instructions (as shown in the red part of the figure below):