Report: Microsoft quietly kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet

In November last year, we reported on the removal of an unofficial KMS-related Windows activation, something which the company was planning to do for a while. The method worked by helping to activate Windows without an internet connection.

If you are wondering about official ways, offline Windows activation has been possible to do using the phone. However, it looks like Microsoft has quietly killed off that method as users online have found that they are no longer able to activate the OS using it.

The first reports of it appear to have surfaced last month where a user 3K is seen wondering why they are unable to go through phone activation on their device. They posted an inquiry on the official Microsoft Learn community forum.

The person cites an official support article from the company which currently still states that a user "will get the option to activate their device over the phone," and to do so, one needs to go to the Activation menu inside the system Settings app by selecting Start > then Settings > System > Activation. After that, under the Activate Windows Now section, one needs to select the Activate by Phone option to carry out Windows activation by phone.

However, that seems to no longer work on Windows 11 or 10 or Windows 7 either, as another user Ben Kleinberg has documented on his YouTube channel. Now when trying to activate the OS by attempting to call the phone number for Microsoft Product Activation, an automated voice response says the following: "Support for product activation has moved online. For the fastest and most convenient way to activate your product, please visit our online product activation portal at aka.ms/aoh"

If you are wondering, that link takes users to the Microsoft Product Activation Portal for online activation. Thus it appears that offline ways to activate Windows may no longer be available even though the official support documentation by the company may not reflect it yet.

Source: 3K (Microsoft forum) via Ben Kleinberg (YouTube)

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Posted Saturday 3 January 2026 at 4:36 am AEST (my time).

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