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Comment by cesarb | Hacker News Reader

> Would they keep running forever without updates?

> > Yes they will work indefinitely. Why wouldn't they?

Because the computer clock advanced past a date which triggers bugs or limitations on some component, and it cannot be adjusted backwards without a full reinstall, or it's talking to networked services which expect the clock to be close enough to reality. It might be possible to fix with third-party updates, but that's no longer "without updates".

And if you need a reinstall, the online account requirement and/or activation servers being turned off might make it hard without third-party modifications. (It's been a long time since I last installed Windows anywhere, and that was before the online account requirement; how hard is it to install Windows on a completely offline computer nowadays?)

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>Because the computer clock advanced past a date which triggers bugs or limitations on some component, and it cannot be adjusted backwards without a full reinstall, or it's talking to networked services which expect the clock to be close enough to reality. It might be possible to fix with third-party updates, but that's no longer "without updates".

This is possible with any piece of software. I don't know if Windows 95 will work after the year 9999, nor do I think it's a scenario we should really worry about.

>And if you need a reinstall, the online account requirement and/or activation servers being turned off might make it hard without third-party modifications.

The online account requirement can be bypassed with a command line option during setup. It does also have some fail safe processing that catches if the online account login fails, falling back to an offline account option.

In terms of activation, you can use Windows 10 or 11 without activating it, but you'll end up with a watermark on the desktop.

Windows XP was the first Windows version to use activation, and it's still possible to activate it via the telephone 22+ years later, so it's likely the activation process for Windows 10 and 11 will continue for some years.

The first part of your comment is an extremely vague theoretical that pretty much applies to any piece of software, not Windows in particular. It is not based on any actual evidence that such a thing will happen. You might as well bring up the possibility of a massive solar flare completely wipes out all computers preventing people from running Windows indefinitely, it is also a possibility preventing users from running Windows 10 forever.

The second part isn't based in reality at all. Windows 10 can be installed entirely offline.

> Windows 10 can be installed entirely offline.

How does it get activated? Or do you mean forever being locked out of, e.g., Edge settings and being able to turn off broken transparency effects?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/product-activati...

I'm not going to link to any of it here, but there's also loads of cracked slmgr.vbs scripts out there that will easily activate your Windows install offline.

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