Slashdot Mirror
Corporations Suffer Microsoft Activation Bug
Uncle Bob writes "Trustworthy Computing, eat your heart out! As of the 2003-04-14 update, people are reporting that Office 2000 SR1a is now asking to be "registered" again. And again, and again. Very little information has been posted on the traditional news sites (the only link I could find was The Register. Note - The Register's story is not quite accurate, but the registration bug is real. Our company with approx 80,000 PCs has been hit...."
The solutions microsoft has suggested to us thus far:
- Set the clock back two years. Means all our files have
bad datestamps, and interferes with our content management
system, so this is not an option.
- Go through a four page process to clean the registry.
This leaves you at a point where Office starts again,
but it is still complaining upon startup. IE you still only
have 50 times before you need to do this again.
- Install new site license key. They've promised we'll
get the opportunity to try that RSN. No idea if/when they'll
get us a key - they've been stalling on this one. It could
be that it's impossible without another patch first.
Are we happy? Oh noo....To OpenOffice.org(No Reg Required). Openoffice is now to the point where it is more than adequate for 90% of MS Office users, especially those who just use word and powerpoint. For the other 10%, just keep using MS Office.
I work for the help desk of a company that supports 30,000 windows PC's, and while we have never officially deployed or distributed Office 2000, we do have a few users that have it installed. We got an advisory from our backline support that this problem is discussed in a technical article Microsoft provided to its partners. The partner-level article is 816642 - You Cannot Register Office 2000 After You Change the System Date. The link is https://premier.microsoft.com/premier/library/defa ult.aspx?path=/premier/kb/en-us/816/6/42.ASP?KBID= 816642 , but if you don't have premium support, you can't view it, and I can't find a mirror of it via Google.
The cause? Well, the issue appears related to the "End of life" code written into the product, which is what that article discusses. Apparently, Microsoft coded Office 2000 to 'expire' and to need to be reativated at some point, but apparently there's a glitch in that code that causes it to happen over and over again.
I am going to second this point, as it truly is one of my pet peeves.
The new Securom 4 is absolutely awful about this. I have many friends whose brand new games will not play because Securom tries to do things with their brand new CD-ROM drives that those drives just don't handle well.
What are these customers supposed to do? Buy a new CD-ROM drive? What if that one doesn't work either?
The one solid workaround that I have found is to use Daemon Tools in conjunction with a product like Alcohol 120% to create a perfect MDS image of the CD.
Let's face it. With names like "Daemon Tools" and "Alcohol" these products are clearly not targetting your casual software buyer, who is just as likely as a pirate to be locked out of a game he legally purchased. They won't know what's going on, they just know that their game doesn't work 90% of the time. Oh, and good luck returning that opened software if they simply can't get it to work at all.
The irony here is that anyone who makes an effort to play games illegally is probably familiar with these tools, which is to say precisely the people Safedisc, Securom and others are trying to stop.
Most asinine of all is that the games which have CD-keys and are more or less entirely multiplayer oriented -- Warcraft 3, Unreal Tournament 2003 -- have for some reason adopted the most bleeding edge versions of Securom. Anyone serious about the game is going to need a legitimate copy of the game in order to have a valid CD key! Why force them to have the real CD inserted as well?
So far Bioware, with Neverwinter Nights, gets my award for the most clued-in company in this regard. NWN shipped with Securom 4 support, which was almost immediately disabled by the first patch.
I only wish Blizzard would do the same for Warcraft 3, so I could stop explaining to my friends that everyone gets those "Please insert the game CD" messages, and that their options are: repeatedly click 'OK' until the stars align properly and the game decides you're not evil; or, use an MDS image with Daemon Tools and you won't have any more trouble.
Apparently it's affecting few systems, and not every install of SR1a
If you RTFA, you'll notice that it is affecting corporate users running Microsoft Select software. Microsoft Select is a bulk licensing scheme which saves corporations from all that tedious mucking about with license keys (a practical impossibility with this size of user base).
I happen to know the 'global energy company' which is mentioned in The Register article. They pay Microsoft a huge sum of money for their software and this is going to affect their relationship significantly - they are not amused. I expect there will be a significant discount on future licenses, a large penalty payment or a very high profile public relations disaster for Microsoft.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Office 2000 came in Standard, Professional and Developer. No Access, with Access and Acces plus extra dev tools respectively.
These can be purchased under four licensing levels:
1. Individual Retail: High unit cost, includes CD, with single-use registration key.
2. Open: Lower unit cost, CD bought separately (C$30), multiple-use registration key.
3. Select: Even lower unit cost, CD included, no registration required.
4. Enterprise: Select with Software Assurance.
Note that it is only the latter two where registration should not be required that are being affected.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Except, of course, this WAS the enterprise addition.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
The expected lifespan of just about any desktop computer system in the corporate environment is 5 years (you can only deduct 1/5 of the computer's cost each year). That has more to do with how the IRS allows companies to use computers as deductions and less about the actual technology and/or software. As we all know, the real-world lifespan of a computer is more like 2-3 years until either the technology is no longer cost effective to support or newer and faster systems are just less expensive to purchase. I agree with your comment, however. The manufacturer should be responsible for the reliability and quality (kwalitee?) of it's products, whether hardware or software.
More interesting, however, is why these companies haven't tested their upgrades prior to deployment. Surely a company with 80,000 comptuers has a few system on which to form a small testing environment behind an internal firewall? "Upgrades" from MS shouldn't be exempt from security and stability testing prior to deployment. And just because MS says it's a fix doesn't mean that it will work with your company's configurations. In reality, this should be a non-issue as proper testing would reveal any major problems. The fact that this *is* an issue should be a wake-up call to all IT managers and those above them that proper testing is required on *ALL* software and upgrades.
Sheesh. Some people.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
This particular bug is triggered by the date. In other words, the testing procedure would have had to include moving the clock forward past a certain "magical" date.
Personally, I think that this sort of testing should be done by Microsoft. As far as I am concerned that's why you are paying hundreds of dollars a seat for their software. If this bug was triggered by the existence of some third party software then I could maybe see your point, but this is a simple bug in MS Office. The fact of the matter is that after a certain date certain versions of Office 2000 try to register themselves and fail (because Microsoft shipped a broken wizard).