What happens if not activated windows 7

If you choose not to activate Windows, the operating system will go into what is called Reduced Functional mode. Meaning, certain functionality will be disabled. A Windows 7 installation in Reduced functional mode notice the watermark at the right hand corner. Was this reply helpful? Yes No. While installing Windows without a license is not illegal, activating it thru other means without an officially purchased product key is illegal. While you could continue to use your PC running Windows 7, without continued software and security updates, it will be at greater risk for viruses and malware.

To see what else Microsoft has to say about Windows 7, visit its end of life support page. Skip to content Android Windows Linux Apple. Home » Windows. See also Does Windows 10 require secure boot? See also How do I delete swap files in Windows 10? See also How can I unlock my Android password with emergency call? Asked 11 years, 11 months ago. Active 4 years, 11 months ago.

Viewed 8k times. Improve this question. Possible duplicate of Windows 7 activation period — George. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Windows Vista SP1 removed the browser limitation and let you use the entire desktop for 1 hour.

Improve this answer. Oskar Duveborn Oskar Duveborn 2, 1 1 gold badge 18 18 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges. I read somewhere that it auto-restarts every hour or something like that as well, not sure if that's still accurate though. I have never seen that the start menu and task bar disappears.

Perhaps this was true in when you answered, but not anymore? Also, I don't understand what you mean by "If its only the first 30 days That sounds like it is only possible to rearm within the first 30 days; that means before the end of the activation deadline. However, I remember successfully rearming after the deadline. That means, the user could not play the in-built games of the OS and the user also could not use the bit locker. After the trial period, the Aero glass theme of Windows was disabled.

That means the display looked pretty boring and bad actually. You may have already guessed that as the Aero glass theme was disabled, that means no personalization option was available for the users like changing wallpapers or any modification of the display and background.

But the major problem with that new service pack was; if one did not activate it, the OS did not receive any type of bug fixing and featured updates. It only got critical updates.

But I am not sure about it still received security patch updates or not, you can google it to know this. But without any hesitation, it was really a huge penalty for the users who wanted to use this version of Windows without any activation. So for those users, it was very problematic and troublesome to use this OS. Though it is a very old version of Windows, it is still used by some users even now. So you can see, how huge this penalty is. So, to conclude this, apart from Windows XP, every version of Windows in this list is usable without any activation, especially Windows 8 and 10 which have no grace period and Microsoft lessens the problems and penalties for no activation of Windows from time to time, from the oldest to the newest versions i.

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