About to buy a Windows 8 laptop from a guy off Craigslist and want to ensure that it’s a valid, activated copy of Windows 8.1. How can I quickly do that?
I’m always leery of any deal off Craigslist, sorry to say, so the first thing I would do is try to understand where the laptop came from originally and why he’s selling it. “A spare” or “it fell off a truck” or similar is definitely a big warning bell because if it’s stolen and tracked down by the police (or, perhaps, the original owner) they can take it from you without any compensation and you’re out the money you spent. Not good.
But still, there are other situations where you want to check whether Windows has been activated on a computer. And, for that matter, it might be useful to explain what activation actually is. Here’s what Microsoft says: “Activation helps verify that your copy of Windows is genuine and that it has not been used on more computers than the Microsoft Software License Terms allow. In this way, activation helps prevent software counterfeiting.”
Sounds good. There are two ways to check to see whether the copy you’re running is Activated or not.
The more obvious path is to bring up the charms bar while in the Desktop:
Choose PC Info and the resultant Window has a ton of interesting information:
At the very bottom you can see that “Windows is activated”.
Easy enough!
Now there’s also a smarter way to ascertain this information through the remarkably sophisticated search engine in Win8.1. Instead of guessing, simply ask it how to check for activation.
I do this by bringing up the search charm (use Windows-S as a keyboard shortcut) and typing in “windows activation”, or at least as many characters as needed to bring up something useful:
There we go. “See if Windows is activated”.
Easy enough, eh? Click on it and…
There you go: “Windows is activated”.
Now you know. And be careful with Craigslist.