Microsoft software activation?

[Boomyal]

Am in need of a copy of Microsoft Word 2010, specifically. I will probably have to get it along with the whole 2010 Office Suite. I found a copy of 2010 Home and Student, on ebay, for a very nice price. It is a 3 license version, with product key...........however the seller discloses that the three activations have been previously used and that the buyer would likely have to call Microsoft to get it activated.

Will they do it? Surely they would not/cannot kill the physical resale of their products by such gimmickry.

 

[MTboatguy]

Microsoft can do anything they want, I have never seen them refuse an activation, but they are within the laws to refuse activation if they are so inclined because the licenses on that disk has already been used, more than likely they would make you account for the reason it is being activated on another machine, or they could require you to purchase a new license. That said, I have installed Office 2007 on all of our machines with no problems at all. They are getting a lot more stricter on how they handle licenses these days, but they have not really clamped down to much on personal users. They are far more interested in going after pirates, or large companies trying to circumvent hundreds of license fees.

 

[MTboatguy]

Oops, something went wrong there!!

 

[southkogs]

Gotcha' MT ... figured ya' only needed to say it once

 

[JASinIL2006]

Am in need of a copy of Microsoft Word 2010, specifically. I will probably have to get it along with the whole 2010 Office Suite. I found a copy of 2010 Home and Student, on ebay, for a very nice price. It is a 3 license version, with product key...........however the seller discloses that the three activations have been previously used and that the buyer would likely have to call Microsoft to get it activated.

Will they do it? Surely they would not/cannot kill the physical resale of their products by such gimmickry.

I would think it would depend on whether the other 3 activations are still actively being used. If not, e.g., the computers died and were scrapped, then it shouldn't be an issue. But if those machines show up as currently being used (and I believe they can determine this), then they would likely not activate your machine. You'd basically be buying software that couldn't be activated.

 

[slag]

Microsoft's activation practices are shady at best.
A few years back when Windows 7 came out, I bought two of the Windows Home Premium 3 pack upgrade disks for use on 6 total PCs.

I have 5 pcs in my house, but, over the years, due to virus issues, hard drive failures, etc, have had to reinstall the software.

I bought a new hard drive to replace one that had developed bad sectors. It was my os drive on my media center. I reinstalled Windows 7 (the upgrade), but of course can't activate it. I called into MS to see how I'm supposed to activate this because originally I had upgraded XP to Windows 7, but with a bad hard drive, I can't do that anymore. They told me for both of my keys, I had activated well beyond the limit. 5 on one and 8 on the other. I countered with the statement that I only have 5 pcs, but sure, I've activated it numerous times on the same PC for various issues. Besides, the box and disc say its for use on up to 3 pcs per license, not 3 activations.

At any rate, MS can't help me and I'm hosed as I couldn't activate this install even though I own the software and originally had XP on my OS disc. I wasted over an hour talking to people who did not have English as their primary language and who were hard to understand and not helpful at all.

Eventually, I was given a workaround on another tech site that worked for me.

open regedit, search for "MediaBootInstall", change from 1 to 0, close regedit.
open an elevated command prompt, type "slmgr /rearm".
reboot

Now your install will take an upgrade key.

But personally, I think that's total BS that they say 5 and 8 activations is too much. The family packs are retail licenses, and can be moved between machines.

 

[MTboatguy]

It is only going to get worse in the future, with the newer versions of software coming out, they are storing more and more data on every single device that goes online.

Yes, they can track how many times a license has been activated and yes, they can track if that activation key is still being used when you try to activate it on another machine. As cloud computing becomes more prevalent, the whole activation situation is going to become more of a nightmare, with cloud computing you don't own your software, you will be purchasing a yearly subscription to use the software only. The industry is pushing to get rid of retail sales and have everything become a subscription service which will save the companies billions of dollars a year because they won't have to make media for installation sales.

The upcoming Windows 10 is going to be offered cross platform and it will be free to anyone that upgrades during the first year, the problem is, it has been very sketchy on how applications and programs are going to be handled and even though the Windows 10 upgrade is going to be free for a period of time, how are they going to handle updates to the core OS after the first year of upgrades. Speculation in the industry is that some of those updates to the OS are going to become subscription based.

Things are going to become very interesting in the future, for some it will be a dream, for others it will be a nightmare, but it is coming none the less.

 

[Boomyal]

Well slag, this would be for a full install, not an update. I wonder if your prescription would work for that. If maybe so. I do not understand what you mean by 'elevated command prompt'?

 

[MTboatguy]

You run the "cmd" command from the start>run option on the start menu, make sure you are in administrator mode. If you want to go into the registry, make sure and back your registry up before making any changes, the registry can be accessed by the start menu, hit start and type regedit in the run option.

One thing I forgot to mention, I would not purchase a software disk for any price, if I had to play in the registry to get it activate. Boom, I might even have a copy of 2010 around that is pre-activate, let me search my files, if I can find it, I will send you a copy.

 

[Boomyal]

....... Boom, I might even have a copy of 2010 around that is pre-activate, let me search my files, if I can find it, I will send you a copy.

Be sweet if you did, MT-Thanks for looking.

 

[MTboatguy]

Be sweet if you did, MT-Thanks for looking.

Do you have specific files that were created in 2010? I do know the versions are compatible, what is the extension on the files you need to open?

 

[Boomyal]

I have a full copy of Office 2007. It will not open .docx files. That is what I am getting more and more of.

I also have one copy of 2010, on one of my computers, but that was a gift from a multi license package that is now maxed out. I do not have the CD for that one but it does .docx files.

 

[MTboatguy]

You do know that you can save files in the .doc format, even on the newer versions of office, I have my word files save to .doc as a default. If I remember right, Microsoft has a plug in that you can download for office 2007 that will read and resave .docx files.

 

[bruceb58]

I always save as .doc files even with 2010.

 

[Boomyal]

I always save as .doc files even with 2010.

Yabut, too many people who send me Word files do not! I need to have the option.

 

[MTboatguy]

Yabut, too many people who send me Word files do not! I need to have the option.

Microsoft Compatibility Pack

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3

This pack will allow you to open documents, Excel and Power Point files made in newer versions of office.

And yes, I am going to go to town in the next day or so and look at what I have in storage to see if I still have the 2010 disc.