- Once a system is activated, this activation cannot be removed because the license is stored in the Microsoft servers and not in the user's system. MS checks the hardware ID (HWID) and if a license is found in their database, the system will automatically activate.
- Any significant changes in the Hardware (such as a motherboard) may deactivate the system. It is possible to reactivate a system that was deactivated because of significant hardware changes, IF your activation, was linked to an online Microsoft account.
- For activation to succeed, internet connectivity must be enabled. If you are trying to activate without these conditions being met, then the system will auto-activate later when the conditions are met.
- The system will NOT auto-activate if VL (Business) media was used for the installation. In this case, the user will have to insert that windows edition Retail/OEM key (find keys below on this page) to activate, if the user doesn't wish to activate again using this script.
- In the official upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10, Microsoft provides an HWID (digital license) activation for Windows 10 without any cost.
- In the background, the upgrade process runs a file named `gatherosstate.exe` and it checks the license of current Windows if found activated, it generates a valid GenuineTicket.xml which is sent to Microsoft and in return, MS authorizes a license.
- So if we just convince the `gatherosstate.exe` file that the conditions are met for ticket generation by fooling it, it will generate a valid ticket, which can be used to get the valid HWID (Digital license). The script here does exactly that to get the activation for free without any upgrade process.
1.**Downlevel Ticket** - This is the simplest ticket generation process. In this method, ticket is signed by downlevel key by the system and the ticket's OSVersion is 10. If it's generated on Windows 10/11 then MS ideally aren't supposed to grant activation, however they do and method is continuously working from last 4-5 years. Almost every HWID activator (at the time of writing this) is based on this method.
2.**Lockbox Ticket** - This is slightly a trickier method. The ticket is signed by Lockbox key by the system and the ticket's OSVersion is 10. This ticket generation process involves cleaning Clipsvc licenses and IdentityCRL registry key in the system. Due to some hiccups in the process, this method is not primarily used in MAS, however these are the types of tickets that are identical to the genuine ticket generated by system on activated Windows 10/11.
3.**Universal Ticket** - In this method, we set the OSVersion =\<5 in the ticket and when we apply the ticket, system ignores the HWID in the ticket due to lower OSVersion and grant the activation anyway. This ticket can be applied on any system. These tickets can either be Downlevel or Lockbox type. MS ideally aren't supposed to grant activation, however they do.
Latest version of MAS is using Universal ticket method. Other ticket method scripts can be found in this repo [MAS-Legacy-Methods](https://github.com/massgravel/MAS-Legacy-Methods)
- Revoking the license would be insane and will face many complications and risk of voiding valid licenses. However maybe they can block the new activation requests coming from Downlevel and Universal tickets. But the tools are working from 4-5 years and they don't seem to care much for consumer piracy; That's not where they get the most money from.
- ServerRdsh edition does not [officially](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/windows-10-multisession-faq#can-i-run-windows-10-enterprise-multi-session-on-premises) support activation on non-azure systems.
The process here is based on Universal ticket method. Here we will create identical tickets which are used in MAS HWID script and activate the system with it.
- If the system is already activated then created ticket will be a Lockbox ticket and if not then it will be a Downlevel ticket.
- To make the exact ticket used in MAS HWID script, make sure system is already activated and fix the time with below Powershell command and then initiate the ticket generation process as per above mentioned steps.\
