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Question

Does windows OEM or Retail CD comes with expiry date?

Oct 14, 2015 5:44AM PDT

I want to buy few licenses of windows 7 from market before they go out of stock for future use. It will help in case any existing or new computer requires windows 7. I have one doubt related to this issue.

1) Is there any expiry date on windows 7 oem/retail cd for installation or activation before due date? Is it possible to install windows 7 cd purchased today in 2020?

Thank you.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Good question for a crystal ball.
Oct 14, 2015 6:51AM PDT

It's been debated what happens when Microsoft goes under and takes the activation servers with them. That's an unlikely scenario. What has happened is that someone (bad) uses your product key and you didn't know.

That's one of the reasons 10 doesn't use such keys but activates and well, that's all on the web so why duplicate that here.

When you get back from your time travel from 2020, we'd like to know.

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Answer
You seem aware of the 2020 date. I imagine it'll be like XP
Oct 14, 2015 8:48AM PDT

When MS discontinued support of XP, they just stopped providing updates for it, but I believe you can still install it, if you want to have an unsupported (by MS) operating system. In the mean time before 2020 who knows what might come out to be supported only by Windows 10. Right now I'm perfectly happy with 7, but in 5 years time, a lot could possibly happen. I don't have a crystal ball either though, and if MS knows, they aren't saying.

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Answer
Here's my guess
Oct 15, 2015 8:49AM PDT

In 2020 msft will stop new patches for w7.
You will still be able to install and activate and get the patches msft has.
There will be 1000's of active w7 users in 2020 any one of which may need to load/reload the os.

For msft to block this would create quite a fuss