[Unixfy]

Windows licenses are costly and any datacenter will not provide you the license for a VM all windows images comes with a six month trial license you can use even you can renew that six month trial license for 3 times that means 6X3=18 you will 18 month of free trial license with each copy of windows however the upcoming windows versions after windows 8 asks you the installation key(not activation/license key) when you got the installation key you ll get it free for 1 month then renew it by cmd.exe.

Yes, I'm aware of the cost (dang, Microsoft!), as well as the trial. However, the issue is that when you RDP into the VM it says the trial is over and you're just stuck at an activation dialog without a desktop.