Even Windows 7 actually didn’t care if you had no key.
You could leave it unactivated forever and the worst thing that would happen is it would have a “Activate windows” watermark message bottom right over the desktop, and it wouldn’t let you change the personalization settings eg theming (oh no).
Never had to pay for a key anyway. I just hopped on eBay and looked for machines that were “for parts only” where the seller took a very nice picture of the bottom of the computer.
It was very nice of them to share that software with me once they were done using it.
Even Windows 7 actually didn’t care if you had no key.
You could leave it unactivated forever and the worst thing that would happen is it would have a “Activate windows” watermark message bottom right over the desktop, and it wouldn’t let you change the personalization settings eg theming (oh no).
Never had to pay for a key anyway. I just hopped on eBay and looked for machines that were “for parts only” where the seller took a very nice picture of the bottom of the computer.
It was very nice of them to share that software with me once they were done using it.