If it's not activated it won't download updates and won't let you keep a desktop background. Every time you startup windows it'll make you wait 15 seconds before it'll load and occasionally has intrusional message telling you to activate. Other than that I haven't had a problem.
Only reason I'm in this situation is because one of my HDs failed (I use RAID) so I had to remove it and format the remainder. When I reinstalled it decided my copy of windows was in use already (as in, on my computer as is now plus one now faulty hard drive) and told me I needed to activate within a month. One month later not a great deal really happened, and I refuse to pay premium rate phonecalls so that a microsoft employee infront of a switchboard can tell me there's not really much I can do except for buy a new version of windows. So **** 'em.
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