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WGA — Too Many False Positives
An anonymous reader writes, "Microsoft insists that its Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy program is nearly flawless. But that's not the impression you get when you visit the company's WGA Validation Problems forum. Ed Bott at ZDNet went through 137 problem reports submitted there during a two-week period, each one accompanied by the output from the official Microsoft diagnostic utility, and found that 42% of the people reporting problems were actually running Genuine software. From the article: 'One large group consists of people who, for some unexplained reason, were displaying cryptographic errors related to digital signatures. The problem is so common, in fact, that Microsoft representatives have a canned response they paste into replies to forum visitors who appear to be showing false positives caused by these errors.' In a related story, the first WGA errors from Windows Vista and Office 2007 have appeared in the wild."
Think of it this way. 137 users in 2 weeks. How many users run Windows again? I am not defending WGA however it is not extreeme as it may seem.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Back in July(?) when Microsoft issued an update to the WGA tool, I figured I may as well install it (I'd be forced to eventually) on my one Windows box. So I installed it, and rebooted, and the login screen proclaimed loudly that Windows was not genuine. (Well, not literally loudly, it didn't shout over the speakers or anything -- which would be an interesting deterrent, now that I think about it.)
This came as something of a surprise, given that:
I logged in, did some searching on Microsoft's knowledge base, and found a link that said something like "Validate here." I clicked on it.
To my surprise, it told me my copy was perfectly valid.
I eventually concluded that Norton Internet Security had blocked the initial validation attempt. Because there was no desktop shell, there was no opportunity for it to pop up a notice and ask me if I wanted it to let the data through.
After that experience, I can't say I'm surprised that Microsoft found many of their false positives to be the result of security software. Admittedly, they were looking at registry changes, crypto problems and McAfee, rather than a transient error with Norton.
Does this mean that all MS-Windows computers MUST be connected to the Internet to run now?
Really, 90% of them are currently connected, but sometimes...for safety's sake, I like to keep one completely disconnected from the Internet and feed it updates manually via CD-media.
How many false copies of windows pass as authentic?
That's when WGA says the copy is non-genuine, and Microsoft's Genuine Advantage diagnostics tool disagrees and says it's genuine.
What I don't get is why they don't just take the flawless detection code from the diagnostics tool and put it into WGA.
WGA -> Would've Got an Apple if I knew then.
In my neck of the woods two people in my family are thinking of a full out change and so are a few of my friends. It's obviously not just because of WGA. It's a lot about a growing feeling of insecurity and anger at a company that just doesn't seem to care a damn.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Maybe this is a conspiracy theory but hey - this is possible so why not mention it.
Could it be that MS is hoping that some of users that aquired MS Windows legaly (as MS likes to speak - genuine) will see this warning and go buy MS Windows *again*. This could boost like 1% of sales - but it is still something in their scale.
On the other hand I administer few dozens of Windows boxes, they get all the patches (including WGA "patch") and none of these reported as non-genuine. And these are not all the same - some used boxes, some new from different vendors, some self-built, few on VMWare and so on. So I personally cannot share the "42%" experience.
But after all this MS Windows activation/codes/stickers/WGA - and so on - bullshit is only getting on my nerves. In my country what makes software copies legal is the license (which can force the way of use (commercial/home) but not something such stupid as stickers) and proof of legal buing. Not some stupid shit that is actually more pain in the ass for legitimate users than is for pirates.
I just booted it up one day, and it said "Your copy of windows is not activated".
In my work, I don't use Windows to store any critical data and part of the reason is bullshit like this. The only thing I use Windows for is creating software that has to run on Windows.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Well I handle 400 pc's on a single floor of a building and we use corp licensing. We haven't installed it on a single pc as of yet. However I personally on the side take care of 5-6 pc's running windows Xp pro. the 1 machine I allowed this software to be installed on now tells me I have to go get a license. I uninstalled their "criticial piece of bullshit software? NAGWARE!" and haven't looked back. This is a dell purchased machine that hasn't even been rebuilt once and it's telling me I'm not legit. If only I'd stuck with nix back in 97 but alas.. someone has to support the corp.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
Here at home, out of my 3 PC's connected to the network and internet, 2 of the 3 PC's are currently running pirated copies of XP and have safely passed WGA and currently get their updates flawlessly via AutoUpdate at MS. The reason that is not 3 out of three, is last month I had to replace my HDD, reinstalled my legit, retail WinXP Pro cd, went to MS updates only to be barred from updates and activation because they determined my retail cd was pirated- have had it running on old HDD for 3 years prior with no problems.
The reason the other two are running pirated XP was an experiment after the legit pirated fiasco on this PC.
I decided I had had enough, booted into FC5, repartioned the drive to all Linux and haven't looked back.
Don't care what Vista is like, as I will not even reinstall XP anymore. This weekend, both of the other PC's will get their XP partitions deleted and go back to dual boot Win98se and Ubuntu only. The XP partitions are too small to be more than barely functional, so no sense in trying to leave them running.
So here is 3 sales/upgrades that MS won't get.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Start pestering the makers of these programs to start working on porting them. The more people start making a racket about being tied to one OS and demanding that their money be given a choice, the more software companies will listen up and start working on giving us all freedom of software
The unexamined life is not worth living
what is M$'s incentive to fix this when the bugs mean they sell more products?
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
Even when you call them on the phone and are 100% legit they dont do much for you. " Your only option is to reformat and install a freshly purchased copy" " have a nice day and thanks for choosing microsoft"
And no im not kidding, im heading out to 'repair' the very user that called microsoft crying for help. Its far to easy to just change your # then reformat..
Screw them and WGA.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Not my topic, but what the heck...
You know, OSS does not need to mean free. Why not donate part of what you save on lincensing to those OSS developers? Or fly them out on a junket? Or give them a leftover PDP POS in your storage that you've not fired up in years?
You are not a fool, so what guarantee can you expect from the developers that give their work to you open and free, at their loss, without any reward, often not even trivial thanks and appreciations.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
It seems a bit low...
We've used it on ~40 clients and my school, and only 6 of them were detected correctly. OTOH, the admin's laptop is using a pirated version. His passed WGA just fine!