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Because they'd still prefer you purchase it, or maybe a later version.

In Windows 10, if you don't activate, all that happens is that it displays "Unregistered" in the corner and refuses to let you change the desktop wallpaper (and you can even get around that by rearming the "trial").

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There's a few other customization items that are locked away as well. I can't recall what they are, and I finally registered by copy after years of running windows 10 and 11 unregistered so I can't even look for it. It might have had to do with graphics settings (flip presentation model?), or HDR. I think there were ways to force those options with registry edits, but that's more trouble than buying a cheap $10 windows key, which is what I finally ended up doing.

I also see lots of reports that updates other than critical/security ones may not be downloaded and applied for unregistered installs, but I'm not sure how true that is (or if it's mostly moot because I know you still get the big spring/fall patches, or at least have historically).

> There's a few other customization items that are locked away as well.

One of them is the "transparency effects" toggle, which needs to be off in VMs with VirtualBox Guest Additions installed for things to work right, and is on by default.

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