this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
562 points (97.6% liked)

Technology

87646 readers
3421 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] affenlehrer@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I was a kid at the time with a pirated copy of W95. I had memorized the W95 license key (wasn't that difficult but I finally forgot it) because I had to reinstall it so often. I think at least once a month.

[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

17195-OEM-0001875-01864

Yeah, I reinstalled that much that I remember it.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I freed up a couple of spare brain cells on that sort of thing back in the day once it was discovered around the schoolyard that Windows 95 (in addition to Office and a couple of other M$ products) would happily accept a CD key of all ones: 111-1111111. I don't think this was applicable to the OEM versions, though. Windows 98 meanwhile would take a key of 12345-12345-12345, etc.

I still have the Windows 2000 MSDN CD key memorized. From XP onwards, the... alternative... activation methods did not require knowing license keys anymore.

One wonders what it was like to be a member of mankind in an era when all you had to memorize was actually useful information.

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Me too, at work, on a dozen machines. ALL THIRTY TWO FLOPPY DISKS.

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 3 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I had a w98 and xp key memorized at one point

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

I'm pretty sure I still have an index card somewhere with an XP key on it. I very nearly had it memorized.