Can You Use Windows 10 Without Product Key?

[oliverbattley05]

What the title says.

 

[Colif]

Yes, but there is no guarantees Microsoft won't change their policy and stop you running inactivated,

You will get a constant watermark on desktop reminding you, and a message in settings. That is about all.

 

[Peter Martin]

yes. and it gets all updates and stuff too, you just can't change your background wallpaper and a few other unimportant things.

 

[Colif]

Pretty sure there is a way to swap desktop wallpaper too... I can't test it though

 

[Peter Martin]

why bother? it's great they let users do this.

 

[USAFRet]

What the title says.

So far, yes.
I have a long running test of Win 10 Pro in a VM instance, Unactivated, just to see exactly what happens.
Installed on Dec 2016. 673 days s far. No change from Day 1.

Gets all the relevant updates, etc. Updated to v1809 the other day.

You do get the randomly appearing nag text at the bottom right. This shows up on top of anything else on the screen.


Of course, MS could cut that off at any time.