Microsoft Outlines How it Will Nag You Into Activating Windows 7

A post on the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) blog outlines how Windows 7 users will be nagged into submission in terms of activation, and what will happen if they do not activate, or if the copy is believed to be non-genuine.

Much of the behavior is very similar to how Windows Vista currently operates, but there are some differences.

After the third day of running the OS without activation, you'll begin to see a message in the system tray reminding you to "Activate Windows Now" plus the time remaining in the grace period.

If you still take no action you'll get that same behavior through the 27th day. After 27 days, if you have not activated the software you will receive the message every four hours.

On the 30th day, you'll be nagged every hour. If you still fail to activate, you'll get a message from the system tray every hours that reminds you to activate, a persistent desktop notification noting that your copy of Windows is non-genuine, a non-genuine message that appears when the Control Panel is launched, and the desktop will be set to a plain black background (and if you try to reset the background it will return to black every hour). You will not be able to receive optional updates from Windows Update unless the copy of Windows is properly activated.

Most of this is the same as Windows Vista, at least SP1 and higher, when the "kill switch" functionality was removed. However, the part about the Control Panel and the blocking of optional updates (as shown above) is new.

Microsoft did add that the product is still beta (no!) and they may change the activation process as the release approaches.