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WGA Under Vista SP1 Is Kinder and Nags More
DaMan writes in with a ZDNet blog entry on Windows Genuine Advantage under Vista SP1. It seems that the draconian features present in Vista RTM have been replaced by nag screens and annoyances such as repeatedly changing the desktop background to black. But WGA no longer turns off Aero and ReadyBoost or logs you out after an hour."
Office is, and has been for years, the primary non-game breadwinner at Microsoft. The OSes are next, and the middleware falls third (sometimes going negative). Almost everything they do for Internet, though, is at a loss.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
And if it were that simple, nobody would be complaining.
One issue is that the OS keeps checking. What if it decides it isn't valid?
Another issue is that it sends an unknown set of information to Microsoft, to see if the OS is legit.
Another issue is that, if you change the hardware setup, the OS might decide it's not legit. This is not an acceptable behavior in servers, and is a real pain in general.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
WGA should at least give the option to back up its state of that its activated to a certain machine, similar to how one in XP can back up the wpa.bak and wpa.dbl files. Then, in case the machine has to be reinstalled again, Windows can prompt for a copy of these files, and not have to ask for a CD key on future installs.
Just use phone activation. The installation ID calculated by Windows is the same even across formats, which means the phone confirmation ID is reusable. Just activate by phone once and you are free to reuse the confirmation ID every time you reinstall after that, no further verification by Microsoft required. Note that this applies only to Vista and is different from XP, where the installation ID included a random salt and was unique to each installation.
Another possibility, but this is a can of worms, is using a TPM chip to store a certificate. Once the machine is activated to use a certain edition and OS, a certificate is stored in the TPM, similar to how Apple stores a certificate for MacOS. Then, on subsequent installs, the OS just checks to see if its licensed via the TPM for that feature set, and goes on its merry way, never requiring activation again.
This is basically how it works today for preinstalled copies of Windows from large OEM's (Dell, HP, etc.). The computer manufacturer puts a specific string in the BIOS which is verified by Windows. If an OEM copy of Windows is used, activation is bypassed and no need for communication with Microsoft is ever required. It's only available from large OEM's because Microsoft must trust the OEM to correctly account for each computer sold and pay the appropriate license fee. This technology is referred to as SLP, or System Locked Preinstallation, and dates back to Windows XP.
I had students adjust the clock many times to the wrong year and that flagged the WGA to see Windows as counterfeit every time.
All I say is "Thank god for Reborn cards"
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Um, I believe that MacOS X dropped the use of TPM-chip copy protection soon after it was introduced, and only a few notebook motherboards ever had TPM chips on them. In fact, I'm not sure if any retail versions of OS X nor any publicly-available Apple motherboards actually had TPM support.