8/25 Windows Genuine Activation Problems -- Vista Users Exercise Caution

[Lemur]

Our Vista-using Orgahs should be made aware of a current problem with Windows Genuine Advantage activation (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070825-windows-genuine-advantage-suffers-worldwide-outage-problems-galore.html). Key info:


We contacted our sources at Microsoft, who told us off the record that the company is aware of a major WGA server outage affecting users across the globe. [...]

For those of you doing installations and upgrades this weekend, we recommend that you avoid activation at this time. Remember that you can run Windows legally for 30 days without activating.

If you attempt a validation and it fails, your install may be marked as non-genuine, which could lead to several annoyances. First things first, do not reboot a Windows machine that has been marked as non-genuine. Once you do so, you will lose functionality and the Aero interface. It would be best to wait until this problem has been resolved.

[Husar]

It's funny that you only lose features, I thought it would make your HDD explode and overclock your CPU into oblivion or something. But thanks for posting this Lemur, didn't plan to reinstall though.

[edyzmedieval]

OH NO!

I'm getting my laptop the following days, and it will have Vista Ultimate. I hope it will be activated...

[Xiahou]

For those of you doing installations and upgrades this weekend, we recommend that you avoid activation at this time. Remember that you can run Windows legally for 30 days without activating.I imagine that's pretty helpful to people that already tried to activate. :wall:

[sapi]

It's off the record - officially, they haven't even admitted it exists, afaik :dizzy2:

[Out]

I wonder how many individuals are going to use this to attempt to get keys for stolen Vista copies.

[Lemur]

But thanks for posting this Lemur, didn't plan to reinstall though.
Um, I think you'd also be wise to turn of auto-updates for now. And avoid running Windows Update until this is cleared up. Both of those activities access the Windows Genuine Advantage malware.

If you use Windows, do your best to avoid anything that requires a ping to WGA. That means you should stay away from patches and add-ons until the coast is clear.

[Blodrast]

I'm sorry, I just can't wipe this stupid grin off my face...:beam:

And, Husar, I can't tell if you were sarcastic in your first post or not, when you said "only"... They have a bug that causes my machine (MY machine... let me make that clearer.... MY machine), with the OS I legally bought and paid for, to become absolutely useless, and locks me out... "only" is not a word that fits in here, unless you're sarcastic.

Anyway, if this makes even a few folks think twice and not follow blindly in what M$ "recommends" (read "forces you into"), it's good.

Plus, you gotta love their transparency... "if we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist..."

[Husar]

First off, it says that if the activation fails, you may end up with a problem, and then it says you lose the aero interface and "functionality". Now if losing functionality means you can't do anything anymore then I wonder why they mention the loss of the Aero interface.:dizzy2:

And then I'm just a [deleted] because 1. I got my copy from MSDNAA, it's a key they gave to my university and they should be able to check that and 2. I still have XP as you may know so I always have the option to use that while they strive to find out whether my key is legal or not. It's a bit selfish considering that others may be in a less fortunate position, but it just reminds me about what a clever person I am.:clown:

Oh and my impression of Microsoft is that they are one of the better big evil companies, there are companies which are a lot worse, I'll complain about them for now.

Sorry, a bit much for HW/SW Forum sensibilities -- Lemur.

[Blodrast]

Ok, so what functionality does one exactly lose ? I mentioned being locked out because that's what I remember reading a while ago - that this is how it was supposed to work. If that's changed in the meantime, my bad. However, even if it doesn't completely lock you out, my point still stands, since you lose functionality that you bought and paid for; you didn't buy half an OS, or a crippled OS - so, as I said, I think my point stands.

And if it wasn't clear (and perhaps it wasn't), my point is that this proves several things:
- an aggressive approach to treat a legal customer is (surprise!) yet again proved not-so-good
- yet another example of idiotic copy protections who only hurt the legal customer, and do not affect people using pirated versions in the slightest
- how lovely it is to have a piece of software that phones home for every tiny little thing, and disables functionality in case it detects something wrong...
- also yet another proof of how bad monopolies are - if M$ didn't have 95% of the OS market, does anybody believe they would have even put out an OS with these "features" ?

And, Husar, looks to me like you felt that I was somehow blaming you for something, or being aggressive towards you... I wasn't - you, as opposed to most people, are rather tech-savvy and you make your choices knowing what you're getting into.
Also, while you may have XP, as I suspect most techie people do, non-geeks are stuck with what the big manufacturers offer as the pre-installed OS...

[Husar]

- yet another example of idiotic copy protections who only hurt the legal customer, and do not affect people using pirated versions in the slightest
- how lovely it is to have a piece of software that phones home for every tiny little thing, and disables functionality in case it detects something wrong...
- also yet another proof of how bad monopolies are - if M$ didn't have 95% of the OS market, does anybody believe they would have even put out an OS with these "features" ?
Well, I still think they could do a lot worse, imagine a Windows with StarForce, or that you'd have to pay 5$ for every new registration.
Also this seems to be a bug, I almost never got the lasting impression that Microsoft wants to annoy it's customers, of course their prices are way too high etc, but I think they'd be willing to solve that wrong registration if it happens to someone, their registration hotline is also free, unlike some others.


And, Husar, looks to me like you felt that I was somehow blaming you for something, or being aggressive towards you... I wasn't - you, as opposed to most people, are rather tech-savvy and you make your choices knowing what you're getting into.
Also, while you may have XP, as I suspect most techie people do, non-geeks are stuck with what the big manufacturers offer as the pre-installed OS...
No offense taken and like I said, I know about other people being less fortunate, I even got my Vista for free. But then I'd be willing to help these less fortunate people, especially females.:eyebrows:

And sorry for that, Lemur, I thought it's fine as long as I use it on myself and don't really mean it anyway.:sweatdrop:

[Blodrast]

Apparently they fixed it. Clicky. (http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/08/25/validation-issue-fix.aspx)

[Bijo]

With all the information around, the complaints, the critiques, the fact that Vista has not yet evolved into a fine beast, and the fact that it's a ripoff sometimes forced to certain people, one should not even THINK of obtaining Vista (unless you somehow obtain it cheaply and still legally, but even then... tsk tsk). Validation is something that... well... never mind.

DirectX10, SchmirectX Schmen.

[Husar]

IT's funny how they say "genuine-only" features. Sounds almost like there is a non-genuine version.:laugh4:
Apparently it's also fixed just by re-validating, so we can hope noone is robbed of his genuine Vista version.

And Bijo, I got it for free, you should be happy that people like me get it early and find all the bugs. It's not like Windows is the only software product that isn't bugfree on release.:sweatdrop:

[sapi]

IT's funny how they say "genuine-only" features. Sounds almost like there is a non-genuine version. Well, I'm sure there's not if you listen to the PR people :laugh4: