Slashdot Mirror
One In Five Windows Installs Is Non-Genuine
snib writes "Microsoft disclosed Monday that, according to reports collected by the notorious Windows Genuine Advantage tool on millions of users' PCs, 22% of all Windows installs do not pass its validation tests and have therefore been deemed non-genuine. Quoting: 'Since WGA launched in July 2005, over 512 million users have attempted to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. Of those, the non-genuine rate was 22.3 percent... [T]he Business Software Alliance... reports that 35 percent of the world's software is pirated (22 percent in North America)...'"
My experience in reinstalling several completely fried windows boxes (virus or trojans) is that the biggest issue is that the OEM CD has been lost and then the key that they have, for a perfectly valid version of Windows, doesn't work for the "full" Windows CD that I (legally) have. So what is the solution? Phone MS Support? Hell they say its an OEM problem. Phone the OEM and they want to charge to ship a new replacement CD, or just don't care.
So I'd say that a decent proportion of those "invalid" windows installs are actually perfectly valid but just suffering because a reinstall had to be done due to the MS security issues and couldn't be done from a CD that matched the key. You can actually get MS support (nice high cost phone number) to sort this out but it really isn't worth the pain, no doubt these days they'll be pushing a "Vista upgrade" as the solution.
So WGA failure doesn't mean it isn't legal, just that the key you have doesn't match the CD that had to do the re-install.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Heh. I bet you didn't read your license agreement very carefully. If you received Microsoft software at your institution through the Academic Alliance, then you did not receive a full Windows XP license. Rather, you were given a license which allowed you to borrow their copy to install on your machine at home and a license key that allowed installation. However, you don't have any rights whatsoever to the software beyond what your classroom needs are. So, they can revoke your license without warning, or otherwise change the terms of what "genuine" means. At any rate, the expected lifespan of the software you received in school is exactly the length of the course you are taking that uses the software (and it wasn't even that long for me, not that I cared since I devoted myself to Linux anyway).
Disclaimer: this applies to Microsoft software obtained through the Academic Alliance program only. The actual words of the license agreement and my actual experience may disagree; however I'm going with my experience on this one, since it's similar to all other Microsoft licenses I've had to deal with.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
I'm a sysadmin responsible for about 200 Windows machines of varying pedigree. We have a site license for Windows XP and most of the machines have that installed and give us no trouble. When new machines come in the door they get a fresh install from the site licensed disks.
I've had trouble in the case of older machines (installed by my predecessor), and particularly with OEM installs. In the latter case, I've seen the failure rate of WGA approach 100%.
So, overall, of the 22%, I'd attribute most of it to failure. Particularly given that Windows and IE appear to use multiple different bits of code to accomplish the same thing (one of the first steps of an IE7 installation is validation). This means multiple avenues of failure, but only one chance to get it right.
No mention in the article of any attempt to account for failures.
One has to wonder how they count non-authorized systems. For instance, I added a gig of RAM and a different video card to my parent's computer a little over a year ago. The system told me that the Windows XP installation was no longer valid when I re-booted the system and put me through the re-certification rigamarole. That failed: it kept refusing the key that the system itself had generated. I eventually found a registry hack out on the 'Net that let me get around all of this and kept my folks PC usable. However, I'm sure that MS would consider this to be a pirated installation, even though the original Certificate of Authority is still glued on the machine. This all happened over a year ago so some of the technical details may be wrong, but the jist of the tale is correct. It all makes me glad that I don't use any MS slaveare at home.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
Why was that modded funny?
.dlls registering and this was stopping WGA from running. But the stupid thing is that because of this, XP couldn't download windows updates. Had to start again with a re-format and re-install. I can't imagine that this would be an isolated case.
I recently had to fix a HP laptop with a reinstall of XP they'd done only 1 month ago (from the supplied CDs and the XP key stuck to it) and yes WGA failed because it couldn't update itself with the latest version. It wouldn't login without a 5 second timer on the WGA warning and many, many popups.
It looked like spyware and other nasties were preventing some
Waking Up - There must be a better way to start the day.