"Today's bork was spotted by a Register reader in Virginia's Danville Mall. The screen is affixed to a wall, but whatever's driving it is having a very bad day indeed. Judging by the taskbar and the old-school buttons, this is an older iteration of Windows, and the activation notification carries a distinct whiff of something unsupported. Windows activation warnings tend to appear after installing the operating system or after changing specific components."
"One of the brains behind Windows activation (in its earlier incarnations), former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer, told us that having a user key in numbers using a telephone keypad presented problems of its own. "Phone activation," he said, "is always going to limit the amount of information that can go back and forth and so will always be an attack vector and likely the easiest one for hackers to target.""
"Microsoft has retired the telephone procedure and now directs users to its Product Activation Portal. For whoever is running the Danville screen, a click on the activation message and a visit to Microsoft's portal should do the trick. With luck, there is a screen in an office somewhere with the same message being shown to a tired IT professional. Otherwise, having to climb a ladder to stop Windows from complaining about activation feels a step too far."
A digital signage screen in a mall displayed a Windows activation warning instead of promotional content. The display appears to run an older Windows version, and activation prompts often follow OS installation or significant hardware changes because a hardware-based hash can change. Telephone-based activation once existed but limited information exchange and posed security risks. Microsoft retired phone activation and now directs users to its Product Activation Portal. Resolving the issue generally requires clicking the activation prompt and using the portal, though physical access to wall-mounted screens can create safety and labor concerns for technicians.
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