Windows Genuine Advantage Servers Out

krewemaynard writes to let us know that Microsoft has been having major problems with its WGA servers since at least Friday evening. Quoting Ars: "Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were writing to say that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one user even said that his installation was invalidated by the service... The Microsoft WGA Forums are full of problem reports, and Microsoft WGA Program Manager Phil Liu has acknowledged that there is a problem, and that MS is investigating." Update: 07/25 22:10 GMT by KD :Microsoft has identified and fixed the problem and posted instructions for anyone whose system mistakenly failed a WGA check. (The link posted earlier was to a 2006 article.)

Comments

Mountain out of a Mole Hill

[ThinkFr33ly]

People are blowing this completely out of proportion. (Big surprise.)

Here are the facts:

1.) The WGA servers were returning error number 0xC004C4A5 when attempting to validate Windows.
2.) This error did NOT cause Windows to go into "reduced functionality mode".
3.) It may have prevented people from downloading certain WGA-only applications/updates.
4.) It looks like the issue was causing problems for less than a day, and is now resolved.
5.) What actually caused the problem has not yet been announced.

So there you have it. People that just installed XP or Vista were not able to activate for a day, and the result of that problem was that the little key icon in the system tray was visible, and they may have had one of those balloon popups tell them to activate.

If that pissed them off a lot, they could have called Microsoft's activation phone number and had their machines activated in less than 5 minutes.

Oh, and a few people couldn't download some optional updates and perhaps a couple of apps from Microsoft.com. THE HORROR!

Non free software sucks.

[twitter]

it's not like I'd switch to Linux anyway. Ubuntu completely screwed up my X configuration after an apt-get upgrade ... [more hate for gnu/linux]

Gee, Mr. Bungi, why don't you use some of that BSD you claim to love. I'm sure that would be easier on you. What? You are really just a troll? Who would have guessed that?