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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."
42%? I guess that is why WGA should be described as "Mostly harmless" rather than "nearly flawless".
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
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.
How many false copies of windows pass as authentic?
The percentage may be exaggerated, but the problem is still significant. The WGA software basically shuts you off from the upgrades you should be entitled to as a valid Windows user. In theory, this would be fine if Microsoft had reliable data as to who is a legitimate user and who isn't. However, it seems that Microsoft's data is not as reliable as it should be. Shutting your customers off from updates the already paid for (by virtue of paying for the software) because you don't have accurate data on who actually bought your product is irresponsible at best.
If you RTFA, you'd see that they limited their survey to people on the WGA forum who were having problems and upon request ran MS's "WGA Diagnostic" utility and posted the results. That utility throws back one of 4 results: Genuine, Blocked VLK, Invalid Product Key, and Not Activated. So as far as MS is concerned, they are legit, and not copies, but the WGA program still flagged them as not legit because of things other software (like a McAffe "quick clean" product) did to their system.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Wait, you're trying to tell me that a software program run on thousands of machines has failed in some cases!? No fscking way. That never happens--WGA should be error free--this is unacceptable.
I think the point is that there are a significant number of apparently legitimate Windows users who are having problems with their computers because of WGA. Since WGA offers no benefit to users, this is an instance of Microsoft taking actions which harm their own legitimate customers because of a policy which doesn't help any customers.
What I'm saying is, we accept software to malfunction now and then, so when the whole complicated piece of software has a couple bugs, that's expected. When a developer tries to integrate a new feature that benefits large numbers of customers but harms a small number due to a bug, that's forgivable. However, when a developer takes action to punish illegitimate users, developers should tread very lightly. It almost feels like vigilante justice, and you should make sure that it's not an issue for legitimate customers. They might have every legal right to do it, but as a customer, I do find it unacceptable. Microsoft purposefully shutting down an otherwise working system, causing a loss of man-hours, because they've falsely identified it as "suspect"-- I find that to be sufficient reason to complain.
As if we needed another reason.
I worked in a small local computer shop for a couple of months this summer. The following happened to me two times during that period.
Some customer would bring in a computer that wouldn't start. We determined that the motherboard was faulty, and replaced it with a similar one.
Windows starts up, everything works, except it wants to be re-activated again. Online activation fails, so I phone Microsoft, enter the forty-something digit number, reads the product key to someone, who then tells me that they are very sorry, but no, for some reason they cannot give me a re-activation code, so I will have to reinstall Windows in order to get it working with that product key. However, changing the product key works fine.
So I call the customer and explain the situation to them, and let them choose between:
1) me taking their harddisk out, attaching it to our backup machine, backing up all their stuff, reinstalling Windows, and all their programs, and all updates, then restoring the backups, and
2) buying a new xp home license,
they both chose option 2. That way they would get their machine back with their entire configuration intact, and if they chose option 1, all that work I would have to do would take so long time that they wouldn't be saving much anyway, compared to buying a new license.
This only happened these two times; most times when we replaced a motherboard, either the reactivation over the internet would work, or the phone representative would give a working reactivation code.
But these two customers payed for a new XP Home license even though they owned a fully legal one already.
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
I am sick of Windows, but I'm even sicker of the geek who assumes that just because he switched his home computer—or even his office server—over to Linux that anybody should be able to ditch Windows whenever they feel like it.
There is a real world out here, and in it there are thousands of small companies that have to use computers to communicate with their customers and suppliers and to keep up with their competitors but that are too small to afford even a part-time IT guru. Companies like that have to buy their accounting software, their production software, their shop management software, their design software—and what's for sale out here in the real world only runs on Windows.
It's not, "can't be bothered to jump to a competitor". There is no competitor, not realistically.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.