By slowly but surely decertifying all valid Windows XP licenses, through its new Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA)program. This system is now required if you want to download any security and system updates. And what it does is keep track of your PC and continues to “certify” it’s the system you bought the operating system for.
Oh, and it phones home every 24 hours. But never mind that — “we just forgot to tell you about that part.” And it’s still a test system, but it’s being forced on users. But never mind that — “quality is our highest priority.”
Problem is (aside from all that), as PCs get upgraded or their hardware is changed — or sometimes just for strange random reasons — WGA begins to think that it’s not the original system. At which point you get cut off from upgrades, klaxons hoot in Redmond, and M$ Tech Support assumes you’re a fiendish pirate out to pollute their precious bodily fluids.
Things get more wrong once WGA registers a false positive when checking for counterfeit copies of Windows. “I bought my PC about three years ago and it had a product key on top to verify that the XP operating system was good,” another reader wrote. “I have upgraded over the years with the latest Microsoft fixes. I have done verification several times and tried to follow the rules. I was verified last year when I loaded Microsoft Antispyware program. Last week I received a pop-up to indicate that a new release
of Antispyware was available. I replied yes to upload the program, then it indicated that it would validate my system. I replied yes to that message. After that, my system now gets the message that I may be a victim of software counterfeiting. If I want to stop these pop-ups and remove the message, send them $149.00 and they will give me a valid operating system. I looked on their list of invalid systems and I cannot find my number. I sent them a message and the indications are they will not help. If I do not
like it, sue. What can a person do? Suing costs more than $149.00.”Just because a customer’s version of XP has been validated as genuine in the past doesn’t mean it won’t be invalid the next time. “How is it that my same version of Windows that Microsoft said was ‘genuine’ last year is now not genuine?” another reader wondered. “I bought this machine directly from HP, and the HP service center is the only ones who have touched it other than me. Microsoft says the HP techs must have re-installed Windows incorrectly — HP says no way. The only thing everyone agrees on is that
it’s my problem. This is just a ‘genuine’ rip-off!”
M$, of course, says it’s all a great service on their part, to make sure that companies and consumers haven’t inadvertently had counterfeit software foisted on them. How noble of them.
Micro$oft has a legitimate business interest in protecting its sales from pirates. But it’s leveraging its near-monopoly of desktop computing to push ill-structured, invasive, and costly solutions on its customers. Isn’t that special?
While working on a software build for one of our colleges, I received a “pirate software” notice from the Genuine Advantage dealie. The problem? This was a corporate site-license installation number. If the Microsoft database decided that number wasn’t valid, all the computers all over campus would stop working. It would probably get straightened out, but not before classes had been disrupted, people’s thesis projects set back, etc.
After several restarts it turned out the computer clock was off. It seems the CMOS battery had dissed the clock, so naturally the MSGA tool decided the installation wasn’t valid. I replaced the battery on the build platform system, restarted three more times, and everything was OK.
Users won’t wrestle with very much complication. Many users I know have stopped updating their computers because “it got lost in some kind of validation procedure”. Multiply that by millions of users and you have millions of unpatched computers. Nice work, Microsoft.
A lengthy, vehement, well-researched article four-square against WGA and how you can still keep your system secure without it. Good stuff.
Robert Cringely’s summary: