End of Phone Activation / Windows Server 2008 Updates for Vista?

[lmacri]

Here are two recent Neowin articles that might be of interest to Vista users:

• From 02-Jan-2026: Microsoft quietly kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet
• From 15-Jan-2026: Windows Vista effectively dead as Windows Server 2008 support finally ends

Now that Microsoft has discontinued Win 10/11 activation by phone I assume that also means that anyone attempting a clean reinstall of Vista SP2 will no longer be able to use the slui.exe 4 phone activation method described in Step 2 / Option 2 of Brink's tutorial How to Activate Vista Normally and by Phone Activation. According to mdiemer's 01-Jul-2025 post # 19 in ljubisa86's BSOD when upgrading XP to Vista the slui.exe 4 phone activation method was still working for Vista in 2025.

 

[townsbg]

I was able to activate XP by phone in '23. That's the last time I tried. It wouldn't surprise me if it still worked for both XP and Vista.

 

[Vistaar]

After Imacri posted, I searched for other articles and videos and there are many. It therefore wouldn’t surprise me if phone activation no longer works for any version of Windows.

 

[Vistaar]

I have never used Legacy Update and have long been skeptical about the value of installing a large number of security patches from previous decades. However I was just reading their home page and it claims to enable online product activation:

Legacy Update also restores connectivity to some websites in Internet Explorer, and other programs that use the Windows built-in networking functionality. This includes Windows Product Activation on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista, allowing you to activate these versions of Windows online in seconds (a legitimate product key is still required).