Topic: Panda Miner using Pirated KMS activator for WIndows 10? (Read 2868 times)

PanadaMiner knows exactly what they were putting on the machine, trust me... here you gotta sometimes lay it down to make things right.  You gotta make them make it right.

But hopefully this changes things in the future and people are given a legit copy of windows 10, hopefully this makes them more honest.

I know all to well of the scams and lies they do

saving face is what they do, so never expect them to admit they knew what was being put on the machine, but I 100% guarantee they knew.

well I am saving my money for after CES anyway, cant wait to see what cards are going to be released this year.

Happy new year phil

@ nu2miner

you did right  don't worry about it

I slept on the issue.

That is most likely what panda miner did is overlay a win 10 with the code provided by microsoft.

I think it is not a legit activation.

But I am not sure at the moment .

We are going to need some clarification on it.

I am not a coder/software guy.

I have a standard legit windows 10 and I will pull the stock msata out and attempt an install.

The software does have a activation code that does not work at the moment.

Could be due to date change.

The Windows 10 enterprise lbst. Is the most basic version of windows 10. It is stripped of edge browser.

And of Microsoft store.  There are ways to spoof the system if the code is bad.  I do not recommend that.
I also don't know if a new windows 10 install will work.  So for now it could be an issue.

I am awaiting a old school msata as I do not want to erase the included msata.

Once I know I can run the unit with the new msata and a good windows 10 install.

I can be more aggressive fucking with the stock. Msata build.

I did not want to deal with the issue specifically on the review since I will not be able to know for sure about the quality of the windows build until weds or thur at best.


I did some research on windows 10 enterprise lbst builds

The activation code say 12345 can be purchased from Microsoft and every machine in your company will have the same code say 12345.

Your company may purchase a 10 to 500 or more license .

So if I get a machine my code would be 12345 and if the op got a machine he would have a 12345 code and no issue happens until all 500 are used on the code.

Spoofing involves multiple methods.  But. Let's say they are fully honest and did buy a 500 machine code.

Some scumbag got a machine. 25 days ago and uses a code finder program extracts the code and uses it 100 times not once for his one machine.

The other machines have not been activated so I get mine 3 days ago and have an issues switching to,English
So today I get it in English.  And I try to activate my machine. With the provided code and it does not work

Due to an early bird piece of shit that used the code 100 times vs the 1 time they were entitled to!

Well if the code does not work for me the reason above is just as likely as pandaminer tried cheating codes.

I do think there is an issue because my code ends in say 12345.  And I found a tutorial on how to spoof windows 10 enterprise lbst.

In that tutorial they gave a full activation code. And the last set of,numbers are indentical to the code,on my machine.

So did pandaminer use the tutorial or did the tutorial rob pandaminer?

All this does not belong on my review thread at the moment since I do not know why the above occurred.

It does need to be mentioned that the included windows has an issue.  Which I did mention first as stuck in Chinese and then as not allowing activation.  At first I thought it was due to the year change but finding a match of my last numbers and of the online method to spoof is troublesome.

In China "Intellectual property" does not exist

There's a youtuber I watch that talked about piracy in China.  No one actually has a legit copy of windows there, not only that but it is (almost) impossible to even find a legit windows in China.  That means when people buy a computer, buy windows from a store, work in a office they are all cracked or bypassed activation by some method.  Microsoft has given up trying to sell windows in China and has focused on other products.

So you can most likely safely assume that Windows on this miner from this small Chinese company was never legit, it would actually be weird if it was.  What probably happened is they bought a license from some 3rd party for say 500 machines and now they no longer exist so it wont activate, or they got scammed from the get go on a non working license.

The other thing is.  If you try to explain to them that you think it is not a legal copy of windows...they may not understand the difference due to culture difference.

Other companys in china understand this and if they sell a product like in this case would have Linux so it wont get pulled from the shelves.

But the catch is...can it be a legal win 10 for the specific use on the pandaminer....ie just nag ware and never upgrade and it just works? Seems to me some folk
are using unlicensed windows 10 on their gpu miners and just ignore the above and let it run as is...could it be the same with them simply not activating the nagware
feature..>?

would be 'slimy' as heck but likely not unlegal ...assuming the above I ponder has any basis in reality?

well, I have still to this day months and months later have not needed to activate a copy of 10 on one of my laptops....  no ill effects....

Given that this is an up and coming new and low budget Chinese company, I highly doubt they invested $100 for a legit copy of Windows 10 on each of their rigs.

Pretty sure in Chinese there are no piracy laws unlike in the US. In the US if a company tried to use pirated software they would be in huge trouble legally with Microsoft.

Yeah, I understand for sure.  Its a shitty concern being the customer having to worry about something someone else did.


I downloaded the full ISO from MS when they were offering the free upgrades, and just burned it to a USB pen drive for easy installing.... it was a publically available one.   If I install a copy of 7 or 8, activate it, then install this over it, it always still lets me activate 10... I think as per the reply above mentioned.  But if you are keeping the original drive intact, then you shouldn't have to worry about loosing functionality in the device.

The fact they have windows in test mode means they needed to code their own driver for one reason or another (most likely video  knowing how mobile device manufacturers needed to do it in the past).... so you will almost 100% need to recover one or many drivers off that msata drive for the new OS install...  But who knows for sure till you dive deeper.


I would highly urge the pandaminer manufacturers to just build an ubuntu or debian image with everything installed on that.    It would be the most versatile for an altcoin miner in the end.

Possibly more useful info:
if the original HDD is activated, you can sign in using your microsoft account and link that license to your account.  when you install a new copy of 10 on a different HDD and link your MS account, there's an option to recover the activation from the original machine.

This may be a viable option rather than a re-purchase of a new copy of 10.

be sure to keep a copy of the windows inf and driver folders.   This way you have all the preloaded drivers.


At least print out a list of the hardware that's present in the original drive =)

Ill comment this:

Windows 10 utilizes many of those features they removed to update things int he background.

I have personally installed 10x64 on a laptop, and purposefully not activated it.  It serves as my internet connection/router at home in the country (WWAN card).   I ran DWS 10 on it; and it has a 24/7 uptime.   Not once has activation of the OS been an issue.   I have no need to customize the OS past what I mentioned above.   No ill effects.  Interesting that they don't lock you out of the system or networking features over time.

Maybe this info will help others.   I am also wondering if someone will be making a linux image eventually.   I know there's a linux mining os out there....  comes preinstalled with the miner softwares.

Not likely as they just started building their units at the end of Nov. They would have had to take the free upgrade on each mobo before July 31st as that's when it ended.