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Driver Update Can Cause Vista Deactivation
KrispySausage writes "After weeks of grueling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA — something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.
Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour."
Windows for good. I had bought a retail copy of XP(not cheap!) and installed it on my laptop. However, a bug with XP caused it to crash before I could activate it(hell, before I even knew I had to) and managed to reset the clock to 1980. Usually this would just be a minor annoyance, but it turns out that if you monkey with the clock before you activate XP(and maybe even after, I don't know), they assume you are trying to pirate it and refuse to let you do anything. So after I plunked down $200 for the thing, I had to go call their number(and this was overseas, so there were some language issues to boot) and take a half hour out of my day to prove to them I didn't steal the thing I just bought. It was at that point I realized there are other OSs out there, and I have been Windows free for 4 years and couldn't be happier.
This problem is hardly unique to Vista, and is just going to drive more and more people away from Microsoft. Microsoft still acts like they are the only game in town. They just refuse to accept that the competition has improved significantly from the time XP was released....
Monstar L
So, I paid for [a locked version of] XP, and I [stole an unlocked version of] XP. I'm happy.
I edited your last statement for accuracy.
If you don't like their rules, don't play their game.
E pluribus unum
I didn't see Vista as any sort of gain when I first started using it (before switching back to XP) on my gaming PC, but now as a developer who has been forced to port applications to the platform I all-out loathe it. It is a disaster to use. I've developed a lot on linux, a lot on windows, and a little on Mac. I've never seen anything like this. The issues you run into--really dumbfounding. People complain about the extra web development time IE causes... Vista is almost as bad from XP! Think about that for a second. This isn't trying to use a bunch of cute IE tags. This is a new version of a "backwards compatible" version of an operating system. Thanks, Bill!!!
TODO - Insert Creative/Witty Signature
Not a pain now, but when you update your drivers for something else like NIC card, well, reactivate again. Then the video card so you can play that new game a with some better frame rates, reactivate again. Upgrade the BIOS on the Motherboard, reactivate again. This will become a huge pain once you have to do this a bunch of times over the life of your computer. And as an IT worker who sometimes have to do these driver updates or BIOS updates for flaws in them that cause problems, especially BIOS updates on laptops to get the fans or docking stations to work properly, this will become a real pain when the Vista upgrade comes.
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It does provide an interesting DOS scenario, trick a user into updating his driver so he cannot use his PC anymore. So now the advice to people with non functioning hardware in Vista is, don't update the drivers? Wonderfull...
On the bright side, I think they finally shows M$ is on their decline. They have no ability to grow successful additional businesses, so they are trying to "squeeze" as much out of their existing cash cow business as possible. I longterm side effects to doing this, though, is obvious.
Or at least is seems like that some times.
At work, I have a laptop (ThinkPad T60) that dual-boots Ubuntu and Vista. Vista is on there only as a way to force myself to get used to it, as I have to support it. Early after Vista's release, an update _from Microsoft_ caused it to be deactivated, had to call MS. (This was later an acknowledged bug that they patched.)
More recently, I used Ghost to go from a 120GB drive down to an 80GB. This too knocked out the activation and the system went into reduced functionality mode. I had to call MS, eventually got someone in India (who I have to admit was very polite and spoke very well.) I had to read off what seemed like a 40 digit code _twice_. Once to the voice-activated system and then again to the person. (No, they apparently couldn't cache this very annoying and labourious bit of data entry.)
I told him why I was having to call and also warned that, as a SysAdmin, I do this kind of thing all of the time and that I was sure I'd be calling again with this exact same Microsoft-imposed problem on this exact same system. I was politely told that this is how the product works and that there was no way around this.
This from an MSDN-issued Vista Business edition. Ugh.
Thankfully, installing Ubuntu on it didn't knock out activation, though I wouldn't put it past MS in the future. If I didn't have to support it at work, I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole. My hope is that MS eventually tightens the screws enough to push everyone away. So far though, people seem to be much more tolerant of this sort of thing than I would have hoped.
I'm a linux administrator and try to use linux as my desktop. Most of my day is spent in ssh and firefox, with openoffice for docs. However, I still maintain XP on one good computer in my house, cause nero is terrific for burning DVDs. Yes, I know about DeVeDe on Linux, it's OK but not as good.
I bought a fairly powerful computer (AMD64 dual core etc, 4GB RAM) in order to run Vista. To be honest, I was looking for a pirated version of Vista, but after a few months, got discouraged. Now there's some OEM BIOS hack or something, but I haven't tried it. I've worked on a Vista laptop and done support for Window mail connecting to one of my servers, but that's it. And when customers ask me about Vista, I tell them that I don't have a copy running yet. That scares them.
So the point is, if Vista is too hard to pirate, guys like me don't use it. Then the friends/family/clients of guys like me don't use Vista. Thus the current sad state of the Vista market. Seriously, I bet that that there will be some kind of mass VLK/hack leak soon to make it easier to install Vista. And I bet it leaks from someone connected to Redmond.
I edited your last statement for accuracy.
If you don't like their rules, don't play their game.
Heck, I hate that kind of comments. People don't use Windows because we want to, we use it because it is a tool to use other programs that help us at work.
Saying that switching to another OS is easy is absurd when we need to use specific software.
[I am holier than thou.]
And I edited yours for accuracy, too. My Dell came with XP Pro on it, which I paid them for, but to avoid any and all activation headaches I run something other than what came installed on the machine. It's still XP Pro, exactly what I already paid for. If software companies don't want to play by my rules then I will remedy that situation whenever I can. Without depriving them of any revenue. My machine, my rules, and shrinkwrap licenses be damned.
Actually, my dentist told me what she had to go though to get her daughters computer reactivated, it doesn't just take a few minutes. Tell me, do you have Vista you Anonymous Coward?
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You are right, if you mean by "most" Macs you are talking about the iMac and those aimed at non-professionals, non-IT, etc.
Macs that have upgradable video cards (and only a handful of suitably blessed cards at that):
Mac Pro
Macs that don't have upgradeable video cards:
iMac
Mac Mini
MacBook
MacBook Pro
I'd say that wemm and truly qualifies as "most".
There are certainly good reasons for buying a Mac - but upgradability is pretty low on the list.
Do you have any examples of software that works in XP and needs rewriting for Vista?
One of my job duties is writing installation packages (we use InstallShield) and we have to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops to get around the Vista "security" so things actually install properly.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
I just bought a laptop with Vista and I need to upgrade it to XP. The one showstopper I'm having is that I can't find graphics drivers for it's NVidia 7150M chipset. Also annoying is the lack of network drivers, but at least I have the Broadcom wireless going so I at least have connectivity for the moment. Any suggestions on where I might find this stuff, ideally links right to it? Yes, I've searched hp.com (it's a Compaq V6620US) and nvidia.com but I just can't find them.
Ironically, everything works perfectly with the Gutsy Gibbon bootable CD. It's only with Windows that I have driver issues.
Judging by your low UserID, you've been around the block a few times. Has piracy slowed down at all? And has activation been the cause?
Almost every copy protection out there has been cracked, from "Please insert the original floppy disk" to SafeDisc and activation schemes. It's inconvenient to the users who paid for their software, but not to the pirates -- because when they get the software, the copy protection's already removed.
It amuses me that you say matter-of-factly that activation "curbs piracy." Seriously. Do a Google search for "Windows Vista activation crack" -- it's not hard. It's just about as easy for most of the other software out there, too.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
How about Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0? Released four years ago. Doesn't work in Vista. Apparently Visual Studio 2003 doesn't either. Windows Mobile 5.0 only came out a couple years ago, so if you want to target devices older than that, you're not going to be doing it on Vista.
You're kidding me, right?
Yeah, sure, there are millions of people all over the world who are using Windows instead of MacOS or Linux - so it must not be that bad, right? It couldn't possibly be because that's what their machine came loaded with, or because they don't even know there's an alternative, or because it's what their business uses, or because it's the only thing that'll run their software...
Windows is a pretty bad OS. Sure, properly maintained, it will run your computer relatively well. I use Windows myself for work, and at home for my gaming. But it requires constant maintenance. Better keep it well firewalled, keep your antivirus/antispyware up to date, get your updates from microsoft, be careful what you click on. We constantly see people at our shop who are just buying new computers because it is cheaper/easier to do that than clean out the old ones that are now unusable due to spyware and viruses.
You don't mention what the problem is that's keeping you from using either of those OSes, but I have a hard time believing it's actually a flaw in the OS itself. Both of them are far more stable and secure than Windows. Both of them offer hardware support that's damn-near as good as Windows, if not better in some cases. Both of them offer nice, friendly, modern GUIs. Both of them ship with a pile of standard software at least as good as what Windows ships with.
Obviously there'll be some learning to do... The buttons look different, and are in different locations... But that's to be expected with any new system, even just going from 2000 to XP to Vista will see huge changes in the interface. So that can't be the deal-breaker.
I would guess it's probably an issue with software support... There's plenty of Windows-only software out there. I keep a Windows partition around simply so that I can play my games. If that's the case then I can certainly sympathize with you - but that's hardly a failing of the OS itself, and it certainly doesn't make Windows a better OS.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Warning! Warning! You have three days to activate Vista or it will be in reduced functionality mode.
WTF? The video card was the first hardware change in six months. And WTF is with the three day warning when I can run Vista as a non-registered user for weeks??
*Fine* I click on the activation icon and get told my license is already in use so I have to do the telephone activation.
I hate the telephone activation. First you have to phone them up and type in the 46 number sequence (WTF, am I arming an ICBM here?) then they always tell you that you'll have to talk to a representative who asks you for the 46 number sequence again since the last machine just went and chucked out the one you just spent ten minutes reading into the phone. Then you have to type in a different 46 digit ICBM arming code to use the OS you already paid money for. The call cost $5 on my friend's pay-as-you-go cell phone.
Hey, Microsoft! I paid $300 for your POS OS. If I had pirated it I would have none of this bullcrap but no, I had to be an honest customer and this is my reward. Do you wonder people hate you?
And this is caused by driver updating yet. The one thing a Vista user has no choice but to do is update all multimedia drivers every few weeks as new releases come out to fix the previous releases problems with Vista.
Amazing business model there, Lou. You guys think of this by yourselves, did you?
Exactly. For example, all our old installers are now privilege-escalation exploits: the installer has the option to run the application after install; the application can be used to run arbitrary other applications. Vista requires our installer to run under an administrator account, therefore our installer can be used to run arbitrary applications as an administrator.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I find myself doing the unusual position of supporting MS here. A lot of applications did things The Wrong Way or used undefined, undocumented behaviors that they should never have relied upon.
An example for coders: imagine a system function named "foo" that returns 0 on success or nonzero on failure. The XP implementation happened to return 1 as its specific, unchanging value of nonzero, although that was never documented anywhere. It just did. In Vista, foo is modified so that it still returns 0 on success, or one of many defined constant values specifying exactly which error occurred. Finally, imagine that lazy programmers who should've been writing
were instead writing
because those two have been functionally identical for a few years.
In that all-too-common scenario, what is MS supposed to do? Their main options are:
I don't envy them the hole they dug for themselves. They would have been far better off if long ago they'd made it clear that their published API was a contract. If you follow it to the letter then your programs would continue to work. If you break with it, all bets are off. Everyone else does this. If you link against GNU libc and your software suddenly crashing, its maintainers would look at what you're doing and either fix libc or tell you that you'd screwed up and to fix your software to follow the published docs. Instead, MS once again used a greedy algorithm to optimize in the short term for developers! developers! developers! no matter how badly that screwed up their underpinnings.
Honestly, I think .NET is perhaps their last chance to get this right. I think they should take a hardline and change constant values and randomize undefined return values and otherwise deliberate tweak things so that API-compliant software would still work fine but everything else would crash horribly every other month or so. It'd be a painful transition for people used to the idea of MS doing the work of fixing vendor software for the rest of eternity, but maybe they could finally get rid of the backward bug compatibility albatross around their neck.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Acrobat 5/6 works just fine in Vista for me - including the printer driver. Its not going to work on the x64 version of Vista - since it doesn't allow you to use 32 bit drivers.
Also there's no 7.2 version of Distiller. The first version of Acrobat 7 (and distller) is 7.0.0 - the last version of Acrobat 7 is 7.0.9, and for Distiller 7.0.7. Also last I checked Acrobat 7.0.0 ran just fine on vista with no alterations.
Because Windows programming guidelines state you shouldn't be modifying files in the Program Files directory. If you need to change anything, you should be changing it in the user directory.
Yes, they changed the way it handles changes to Program Files in Vista - but if people had actually paid attention to their guidelines in the first place (they're not just for show, you know) they wouldn't have had to. You've had about a decade to code it right, so why didn't you?
(Let's not confuse them with sbin dirs - just yet.)
What was that quote about understanding, and reinventing - badly? Next they'll do away with the registry and go back to config files, not require a GUI for some server type stuff, and improve their cmd.exe.....
Get your own free personal location tracker
Who needs Vista for this? They already had this feature rolled out in Windows XP. I was able to unexpectedly deactivate a valid XP install by updating my ATI drivers. I bet it's a little slicker in Vista, but I'm a bit old school. All kidding aside, the real bitch was I could not even re-activate it over the phone! I had an Athlon 64 computer and I took advantage of the Windows XP x64 upgrade special they offered a while ago. I had the x64 media and key, but was sitting on the actual install until some driver issues were taken care of. MS support insisted my XP Pro 32-bit key was an x64 one. After trying to explain my situation and the upgrade path to support for over an hour, I gave up. It forced an upgrade to a product that wasn't quite ready for daily use. My bad for giving them my money. I know. I take full responsibility.
I'll add to that one more little trick Windows has.
When was the last time you told Linux to shut down and it DIDN'T?
Windows has SO LITTLE CONTROL over its system that applications can prevent it from shutting down cleanly! Not system utilities, not kernel modules, not drivers - APPLICATIONS!
I run the Hamachi VPN on my Windows XP side. If it's running and connected, trying to shut the system will frequently - not always - simply fail. Windows will sit there - no message, no nothing and simply refuse to shut down.
Same problem with killing processes. When I tell Linux "kill - 9 " - it's GONE! None of this wait half a minute, pop up a message saying, "Do you really want to do this", then wait another half minute, then - IF it worked, and many times it will NOT - get another message saying, "Just because you took a decision to kill a nonresponding process, can you send us a message about it?"
Please...
For that matter, how many times on Linux do you even SEE a "non-responding process"? Outside of the browsers, or occasionally one of the media players, anyway...
Try running Adobe Premiere, as one of my clients does on 12 of their machines. The crap crashes or locks up several times a day. The other day one deactivated itself spontaneously because they updated a driver for a video camera. God forbid you run the Matrox software on the same machine - that's another nightmare.
Why do I bring up Windows apps? Because they're crap. They're crap for a reason. And that reason is that Windows has an application model that nobody can write to without either producing crap or dropping the OS at some point.
That's the only possible explanation for the incredibly bad reliability of apps on Windows - which contributes to the incredibly bad reliability of Windows.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Anybody want to address whether you can move "C:\Users" to its own partition - so you don't have to worry about losing profiles when you reinstall the OS?
/home from within Linux. Problems? Nope.
/home on another partition - the preferred "best practices" setup on Linux. Problems? Nope.
Thought not.
See here for issues with even trying:
Biggest problem with backups on Windows - Documents and Settings. Why? Because if you try to back it up, you get errors because Windows has open files in there that you can't touch from within the OS.
Can you say STUPID? I knew you could.
Try backing up
Try reinstalling Linux with your
And if anybody at Microsoft from 1990 on had any clue, they would have looked at how UNIX did this simple stuff. It isn't rocket science, it's common sense and experience running an OS from the 1970's.
And Microsoft ignored all of it.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
xcopy /e /c /d /h /k c:\users\* d:\users\*
They had make it shorter to due to their habit of nesting a lot of directories on a system that only handles paths 255 characters long. It's the hobby home computer operating system you have to pay for. A proper symbolic link that all applications that read the file system can see would help fix things too - but we've hit another limit there that Longhorn was going to fix if time permitted.