Limitation discovery is like surgery or autopsy. You got to cut it open and look for cause of death. If it's heart is still beating, you have to find out why, sew it back up, and take what you have discovered to formulate the best course of action in dealing with it.  

Now, back to less morbid discussion, a statute barred loan is not permitted to be reported. If it is, then the results of the autopsy as cited above will cause it to purge. 

So if I understand correctly from the various postings here, you don't know until you contact the student loans agency directly. However, by contacting them, it might also "wake up" the loan. 

In this case it's best to only contact them when you're ready to deal with the worst case scenario. 

If it is barred, then it's up to the individual to contact the credit agencies to inform them to take it off your report - because this will not happen automatically. 

Waking up a loan is what happens when a borrower contacts the lender out of the blue when it is not statute barred and still legally recoverable. In a case like this - when you call, they smell money. 

Before August 2004 limitation disruption was not an issue. Basically, the Crown was of the position that they could not resurrect the dead student loans by any means. However, when the legislation changed in 2004, the law made it so a borrower can cause a debt to rise from the dead if they do or act in some way that breathes life back into it. 

I have been working with people on limitation issues now for 17 years. The number of calls and online service requests we get from people who undermined their own cases are plenty.  This is what happens when you go staggering in on a sleeping lion's den unarmed. 

As for credit reporting - if a debt is statute barred then it cannot be reported. But - if one is reported then the onus is on the one who it is reported on to prove otherwise. 

This is something else for EVERYONE to take in to consideration nowadays. The financial and lending communities are heavily reliant on creditor's rights advocates in law. Lawyers are VERY crafty in their work to undermine you if it means loss to the institution they represent. In some cases, these lawyers go out of their way to do things that are questionable and stand arrogant knowing that people cannot afford to hire attorneys to fight them. This forum and one of my companies (The CFW Group Inc) fight for student loan borrower's and consumer's rights to fairness and safety. Enemies are many but that is expected when something good does battle with something very bad. 

The system can be very bad - but so can some people the system is pursuing. The system tries to attack us when an upper hand is gained, and sometimes people attack us when we refuse to help them cheat and deceive the system. It is a vicious circle.