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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."
Fool me once...shame on you......fool me twice.....shame on me. If you use vista and it bites you in the ass....well.... you deserve it.
I had to reactivate my copy of Windows Vista Ultimate after updating an NVIDIA network controller driver via Windows Update. Not a huge pain, but it simply shouldn't happen. Ever.
...to a question that was never asked: Don't say we didn't warn you.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Is there a decent pirated version of Vista yet? I usually use the pirated version of software, even if I have paid for it. Everything works better that way... games don't need disks inserted, XP doesn't need activation or WGA, etc. The pirates have a better product.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What other industry is there that abuses their customers like this? I feel like I'm being accused of criminal activity from the first second I install a MS product now.
Jay | http://oldos.org
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 $200 for the thing, I had to go call their number(and this was overseas, so there were some language issues to boot) and take a half hour out of my day to prove to them I didn't steal the thing I just bought. It was at that point I realized there are other OSs out there, and I have been Windows free for 4 years and couldn't be happier.
This problem is hardly unique to Vista, and is just going to drive more and more people away from Microsoft. Microsoft still acts like they are the only game in town. They just refuse to accept that the competition has improved significantly from the time XP was released....
Monstar L
Hmm, I can get Vista and have less control over my own system, half (or more) of my software won't work with it, and it has all that annoying eye-candy crap from the Mac that I hate....sounds awesome!
XP ain't broke, so don't try to fix it, M$!!!
"Your mouse moved, click here to re-register Windows Zenith. Make sure you have your birth certificate and blood sample ready. Or click cancel to go into RTFM"
This wouldn't happen on a Mac. 'Cos in most of them you can't even get in there to change the graphics card.
-1 not first post
If Vista had actually done all of the things it promised, and didn't do any bullshit like this then it might actually be a decent operating system. Microsoft's viability might have actually been there.
Main differences being vs Linux/Apple is that Apple is a hardware company and could care less if a small fraction of their user base pirates an operating system as long as they are buying hardware and are spreading the good word, and linux makers... want either support contracts or nothing.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
No, seriously folks, at some point these stories about Vista have to lead to a stampede away from the product. Just watch for the signs....like the one above.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days)
I don't know about anyone else, but if my OS stopped working after three days I'd definitely notice.
Developers: We can use your help.
Good reason to use open-source software. Or at least software from a company that doesn't treat it's customers as criminals by default.
But hey, it's your money, your PC, your loss.
...this minor inconvenience is clearly offset by the massive benefits inherent in a new GUI skin.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
For those that haven't yet seen the reason why changing hardware hoses your Vista and are interested in the details, I highly recommend this:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
It's all about the DRM.
Skip Franklin
It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. -- despair.com
When MSFT was touting the The Total Cost of Ownership studies, did anyone ask, if the costs included reacting to unwanted updates? How many times people have spoken about vendor lock and the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket? Trashed everyone as MSFT hate-mongers. It will only get worse. If the revenue stream is threatened MSFT will slip in another forced update make it more and more difficult to switch to alternatives. Because, get this, MSFT can charge you all the way up to your switching costs. The only way it can increase revenue is by increasing your switching cost.
Put yourself in MSFT's shoes and imagine what you would do. A security issue crops up. One team comes back with a solution that does not break all the competitors products. The other team comes up with a solution that incidentally breaks competitors products. Which one will you pick as "critical security update"? MSFT is doing exactly what it should rationally do, given its market share. It is the customers who are irrationally picking MSFT solutions against their own best interests.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour."
For a percentage of the users being able to use the web browser for half an hour is all they want and need. Not being able to run spyware/malware for that half hour might make this "Desired functionality" mode.
"What other industry is there that abuses their customers like this?"
Been on a commercial airliner lately? How about 8 hours on the tarmac without airconditioning strapped into a seat that's 2" too narrow with 300-lb companions on either side of you and crying toddlers behind and in front of you. Vista won't seem so bad after you get off that plane.
How about Tobacco? They don't abuse their customers, they just cripple and then kill them.
Meat packing? Widespread E-coli outbreaks. At least Vista doesn't give you gut-wrenching bloody diarrhea (although I hear MS Reasarch is working toward this goal).
I often wonder how and when Microsoft will lose their stranglehold on the PC market. Because, as Tyler would say, "on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone is zero." No, I don't think anti-piracy strategies like this signal the end of Microsoft but they certainly aren't winning friends with it either.
It only takes a few key missteps and a to shift the market and open the door for a competitor.
Wasn't this an advertised feature of the OS back before its release? Either that, or it was an EFF warning.
Sure I've heard it somewhere, though.
ilovegeorgebush
From what I've heard, Mac OS doesn't do this kind of stuff either. It's a little different, since it requires specific apple hardware to run the OS, but there's nothing stopping you from running out and getting a pirated copy of Leopard once it gets released, and running that on your older Mac. I understand how stopping pirates is a good thing, but it should never be done at the expense of your paying customers.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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've posted about this issue before but was accused of making shit up just to slam Microsoft.
Wrong. I used to be a die-hard Microsoft fan, until they introduced the broken Activation scheme. Even back in the days of Windows XP. driver upgrades or reinstalls could de-activate Windows. This is why I am so adamantly against Activation schemes - at least schemes which do not allow for license transfers. It sucks, too. If delivering a bunch of workstations to a client where the client wants them pre-activated and added to their domain, you have to activate the system. Now, sometimes one will run into incompatibilities and have to upgrade a wireless driver or video driver (or add additional hardware - and yes, I've even seen USB device driver upgrades trigger deactivation) and if you've got the OEM version, guess what? You need to wait on hold with Microsoft to re-activate the system.
Granted, it doesn't happen often. It does have a knack of happening at exactly the wrong time.
Microsoft: you own the market. Drop the activation scheme. Also, where XP is nearing end of life, isn't it time to follow through with your promise to release a patch which will eliminate the need to activate Windows XP? I mean, Vista has been out for nearly a year now. . .
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode...
Would this be a bad time to mention that Leopard has 300 new features?
Or that you don't even have a serial number to enter, much less activation concerns?
Windows guys, if you are tired of Mac "fanbois" kicking you in the rear stop issuing us steel-toed boots and bending over with a big target taped to your posterior!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh really? Never say never. ;)
Microsoft has been doing this for years with XP. Now, it seems the company has taken it to the next level with Vista and make it more annoying. Activation is really just a nuisance, but one that illustrates the relationship MS has with its customer. Namely, everyone is a pirate and must be controlled and customers start to believe it themselves! At my school, I need to rebuild the XP Pro on a school computer but I don't have the media. I call the schools IT department and they told me that Microsoft has told them that too many computers have the same license and are hesitant to give me the media. However, the computer came with Windows XP Pro and has a sticker right on the side. Should it really matter under what license the OS is installed? When a company treats you like a criminal and constricts your productivity with draconian policies, its is time to look for an alternative. Let's hope you are lucky enough to not need Windows.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
http://wubi-installer.org/
Just try it.
Deleted
My WinXP became "deactivated" after I de-installed the video card driver. This "feature" is hardly limited to Vista, I'm afraid.
Well... look on the bright side, if you have to run Vista, you can always install cygwin and run Wine to support more of the programs that Vista just does not want to continue to support.... or turn Vista as large thin client and run those must have software on another Windows box or virtual server instance. May not be a pretty solution, but at aleast people have options.
MSFT is working so hard to stop people from pirating their software ??? WTF. How did MSFT get to be so damned big and financially well off before they stopped the pirates?
It seems to me that the real reason for the problems with Vista are not because MSFT needs to protect their product with DRM, but that they need to protect the **AA's products. MSFT seemed to be doing very well for itself before implementing DRM. How is it that they now need that DRM to stay in business?
This is what worries me. MSFT seems to be looking out for the interests of the **AA, not just themselves. ( putting tinfoil hat on ) If they are looking out for the **AA, you can bet your last dollar that they are also looking out for the interests of Fascist governments. I'm not just trying to bash MSFT, but they are/were the richest and biggest software company in the world BEFORE they decided to install DRM, so what is the point of the DRM? Do you REALLY want to use a product that does that?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The problem with using device drivers as the basis for activation information is that a change in the driver model which has the result of changing the way that the hardware information is reported back to Windows can be enough to register as a physical hardware change.
How could MS not know that would happen? It's like they just got into the computer business last year, but they act like it sometimes.
What a headache for admins. I just can't believe companies take this kind of treatment from a vendor when there are really good alternatives available.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Did you miss the part of the article where its clearly stated, he could not reactive it without calling MS support to get a new code? Happened to my wife with XP, what a freeking pain.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
When I as a customer have to pay for the OS, and then have to put in my own time at $xy per hour to "fix" the OS, when routine actions occur, as described elsewhere.
Top management decisions at MS are loading up their legitimate customers with extra work, lost income and frustration. Frustration is what doomed T-Mobile's relationship with me, and I dumped them in spite of their cancellation fee (reduce my "plan" and they automatically tack on another 2 year minimum period before I could cancel for free - that is the definition of CRAP.).
Not all the frustrations come from DRM. For heaven's sake, Registry glitches and other things that don't or stop working are a pain in XP. My WiFi on XP simply disappeared as an option in the Networking section. That has NEVER happened on my Macs.
If I ever get a chance to run SolidWorks on something other than Windows, I'll be one of the first to jump ship from Microsoft...forever.
Yet another reason to stick with XP. Like most people here, I constantly upgrade my computer. Every few months I tinker with something or other. Maybe adding some RAM... maybe upgrading the video card ... maybe swapping in an ethernet card just to see if it is functional...
Maybe this article is just FUD, but it still makes me glad that I have 3 or 4 XP install disks sitting around my house.
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
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.
is to hack the product YOU BOUGHT so that you can use it properly.
If MS doesn't like it, they can try not selling their software. They have choices.
Realistically, if you sell the most used OS in the world do you think that you are going to just trust everyone to properly license their product? A company should be building the trust of its customers. If it can't trust its customers in the first place, it should find a new business. And if you don't think the activation scheme is pain enough now, let's wait a few years and see what happens when people are forced to upgrade because Microsoft stops supporting Vista or handing out activation codes.
that's what I would call it... ;)
Are you asking for bug fixes in a Linux kernel from 6 years ago? Nope, And Linus wouldn't give release them anyway. But I don't hear anyone yelling at about that.....
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
MOD PARENT UP. Quote: "Any substantial commercial XP application that has been around for any significant amount of time will almost certainly run into problems under Vista."
Follow the money. Microsoft apparently wants you to pay, and pay, and pay again. Big commercial software companies will advertise Vista if it is necessary to buy a new version of their software to use with Vista.
Apparently to Microsoft the user is not the customer. Microsoft apparently considers the user just a dog on a leash.
I suppose the constant negative stories about Microsoft make it difficult for Microsoft to hire the really good programmers. If that is true, expect more unfinished products with poor characteristics in the future.
People think that Microsoft is a software company that is routinely abusive. But maybe it isn't. Maybe Microsoft is an abuse company that uses software as a means of delivering abuse. If you look at it that way, Microsoft is excellent at what it does.
We seem to live in a society dominated by abusers. For another example, Cheney and Bush, who with their friends and family have a long history of oil and weapons investing, are allowed the conflict of interest of deciding to have wars to get control of oil supply. The result is that the value of your money is falling. Rich people who are heavily invested in companies that can raise prices want inflation partly because inflation causes the value of the money they pay employees to drop.
Vista is more compatible with Windows 95 apps than with Windows XP applications.
Registry reflections, file system reflections, DLL reflections/manifests (and other manifestations) are just a tip of the ice-berg. Instead of locking down an administrative account and using a user to run things that then sudo (or whatever) to Admin to install, Windows' admin doesn't have admin rights - you have to jumps hoops though the UAC (or whatever it is called).
If you ever want to run Custom Actions in an MSI installer that was created with Visual Studio 2005, sorry, you are *out of luck*. The new flags to allow admin custom actions are not supported by VS2005 even with Vista update for it. You have to dick around the MSI files with Orca.
And let's not forget the last 3 days of me running around the forums trying to figure out why a MS supplied runtime does not install with their own installer on Vista. Turns out some "security" update or SDK update or whatever, broke the installers...
Oh, but the Windows 95 apps run fine. The designed for XP or 2000, with people running the apps as normal users in mind type of applications, are the ones that are fscked up.
The hellish experience of Vista is even worse for developers (Visual Studio was not even recommended to be run on Vista by Microsoft until earlier this year with SP1 and that SP1 broke the compiler as we see with Qt4).
The "Documents and Settings" folder exists on Vista - sort of, you just don't see it in the root of the drive, but it's there. Try typing it in the address bar. Microsoft appears to have setup a "symlink" of sorts on windows so it points to the "Users" directory.
Oh, well.
Seems like the guy arguing that it's really no hassle at all a week or two ago wasn't really right.
Surprise, surprise.
Face it, people: when software manufacturers do this kind of thing, the only reasonable option is to pirate their software (if you really have to use it). Because you not only pay premium money otherwise, but have to keep on proving you'd paid.
Just because you paid, you are a suspect for "stealing".
I know inertia is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, but this model is ridiculous... it has to break sometime.
(Then again, I say that about religion as well, and yet...)
Ignore this signature. By order.
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?
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.