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.