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Pirates Find Proper Way to Crack Vista's Activation Schema
El_Oscuro writes "A genuine crack for Windows Vista has been released by pirate group Pantheon. The exploit allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made fully-operational. 'It seems that Microsoft has allowed large OEMs like ASUS to ship their products with a pre-installed version of Vista that doesn't require product activation — apparently because end users would find it too inconvenient.'"
ahhh... owned? :)
Is there an improper way?
In other news, pirates have created a crack to prevent news from 4th March 2007 appearing a year later on /.
Well we live in hope.
Oh no... it's the future.
even if i have access to a valid key
I remember a CNN news snippet on YouTube... it's just not worth pirating Vista, unless one is a hardcore masochist, of course.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Although this particular "activation" method has been around for awhile, it is interesting to see that microsoft never bothered to fix it.
... even when it was!), they continue to make boatloads of money. This 'workaround' for activation is another example of their disdain for the end user; they're willing to accomodate the manufacturers in order to push an inferior software package onto the masses.
... MS.
I can't believe that microsoft is still a lumbering software giant; notwithstanding their disdain for consumers (Turning off vista if it wasn't genuine
It makes me feel like Henry Ford is running MS - 'you can have any OS you want, so long as it is VISTA'.
I've personally decided to put the effort into getting my home computers running OSX (a very FUN project) so that my family can have the eye candy that is associated with MS without
(and yes, linux can be pretty... but I'm the only one that uses it!)
It seems that Microsoft has allowed large OEMs like ASUS to ship their products with a pre-installed version of XP that doesn't require product activation -- apparently because end users would find using Vista too inconvenient.
Since this article is a year old, no testing on SP1, I assume.
Journal
I don't know how Vista's activation works, but I imagine that you only have to type it in once. Surely they could have just asked the user to type in the key on the back of the DVD / CD case, and if they don't have a DVD / CD then to contact their OEM. Works for me.
Unless of course Microsoft have done this on purpose to get more copies on Vista on the desktop...
Summation 2
news.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Note that the article is dated 4 March, exactly 365 days ago. SOmehow the editor does not have 29 feb and though he was living at tomorrow.
THis particular crack has/will be defeated by sp1.
i was about to type in http://thepira.../ into the browser but then i seen the comments :(
"Please do not crack software and publish the crack on the net. It hurts my employer's feelings.
Thank you."
Onda Technology Institute
This was fixed in SP1! I was thinking they found way around the SP1 fix (not like I condone piracy, but seeing MS get owned every once in a while is fun).
What SP1? Wasn't it yanked due to incompatibilities?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
If more and more copies of vista are pirated,its microsoft who wins,in its quest of making its bloatware vista more popular than xp. But soon those people would realise what crap they have cracked! :)
Any kind of mass deployment becomes a fiasco if each computer has to go through some kind of activation. MS has been under pressure from hardware vendors and large corporate customers for YEARS on this topic. Whatever they do to alleviate the well-documented headaches of these people will inevitably become the basis for short-circuiting the process for everyone else.
At times like this, Vista is being ignored at a time when MS needs it adopted. "Features" like product activation have no place in a product that is already a driver-deficient, DRM-infested headache. MS has obviously overestimated the amount of grief that the customer base would tolerate to get a new version of Windows.
Speaking of Vista, gotta love those MS memos about Intel 915 graphics. They claim the Intel 945 "barely works". My MacBook runs Intel 965 graphics; nothing "barely" about it. No Vista, no problem.
Before MS worries too much about piracy of Vista, they need to make the product worth stealing.
Hey, calm down! ... I didn't pay for my copy of windows either ;)
I'm an equal opportunity f*tard
Another group has published an undocumented way to bypass the adult verification in the new Leisure Suit Larry game by pressing ALT+X.
How do these guys learn this stuff??
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Who really cares when Vista sucks. It sucks so bad why would anyone even want to pirate it! I know a lady that bought a new HP laptop for school and I tried to tell here to not get a Vista one. I told her to press HP to give her one with XP on it. She didn't listen... She got it and HATED it! So she sent it back and now she is going to buy a MAC. One more person off of Windows!
Thank you Microsoft! Your doing our job for us!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
OMG this activation method is 1 year old...
I always find it amusing that MSFT says that Vista is the least cracked OS they have made to date... They fail to see that most people who pirate OSes actually intend on using that OS and are as likely to want vista as anyone else...
-nick
I know this will likely be seen as a troll and will hit my Karma but...
Seriously- who cares. Vista is probably the worst operating system to ever be produced (relative to others at the time), if not second behind Windows ME. My company tested it on several computers and has started removing it because it has proved to be almost unusable. It is also a technical support nightmare.
We are actually starting to go to Macs (something I never in my life thought I'd see). I haven't been able to talk them into actually trying Linux, unfortunately, even though I've run it for a couple of years now.
Someone should start a Web site for people to give away the Vista keys they don't want.
I'm not buying Vista, or pirating XP. My copy of XP is legal, purchased at Best Buy for a hundred bucks (actually a little more).
As Windows is so damned insecure, I won't get on the internet with it, period. I mostly use an old distro of GNU/Linux/KDE, and that's what I surf with. When I install Windows I unplug the ethernet, and disable networking in Windows before I plug the LAN back in.
Even were I to trust a patched copy of Windows, it takes longer to patch than a cracker can find the machine and add it to his botnet.
As a consequence, activation is a complete and itter pain in the ass. I have to call their damned computer in Redmond with my cell phone, which costs me by the minute. I then have to key in a very long unintelligible string, talking to a computer that has more trouble understaning me than a phone monkey in India.
Windows is getting flakey again (one slashdotter says I must have a bad memory chip, but I had this problem before and reinstalling Windows fixed it. I don't see how reinstalling Windows would fix a bad memory chip. And Mandriva runs flawlessly, why wil Linux work flawlwssly with a bad memory chip but not Windows?
So before I reinstall that piece of shit operating system that I paid way, way too much for, could one of you pirates point me to a patch that Microsoft calls a crack?
On second thought, never mind. I have no way of knowing that the patch/crack isn't a trojan. If anybody can figure a way out of this goddamned stupid activation mess that frustrates and annoys the hell out of me, a paying customer, while doing nothing whatever to slow pirates down I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
-mcgrew (not the security guy, that's a differen mcgrew)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I already have a legit OEM copy of vista I'm not using, why would I want another copy to not use?
-I only code in BASIC.-
yeah. AMEN, and hallileujah. no more text ;)
Just need to wait a few more months and hopefully Microsoft will start paying people to use it.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
OMG! There was a way to work around the adult verification scheme? How many frustrating hours we spent trying to learn American pop culture based adult verification questions in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore back in the 1980s. BTW there used to be some kind of unix computer called Apollo that had a PC emulator and we used to play Leisure Suite Larry (in the land of lounge resorts) in that machine. Whatever happened to that company/computer?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Am I really the only person who is not super dissatisfied with Vista? I've honestly not experienced anything negative with it. I still prefer the ubuntu installation on my laptop mind, but gamers will be gamers, and Wine hurts my brain =(
Machine9dotNet
And yes,I know some folks have managed to get it to run okay.I also have a neighbor who is still using and swears by WinME,but that don't make it good. Enough folks have been burned by Vista that all the service packs in the world ain't going to help the bad experiences of way too many early adopters. I'll stick with Xandros for my laptop and XP for gaming.But you do have to admit it is a brilliant way to combat piracy,just make an OS so slow and bloated that nobody will want to steal it!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I still don't want it, though.
Finding people who will bother to install a pirated Vista thereby requiring said crack.
I recall reading about this one before here...slow news day? I think its detectable in the latest updates also.
How come it's a "Schema", not a "Scheme"?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The submitter wanted to know how to do this on XP! You removed his question! Now how is he going to pirate an OS that was released 7 years ago?
It was so embarassing to have to crack it the improper way.
That's not how you do it. You're supposed to talk about how THIS is the year Linux is finally going mainstream and everyone's finally going to start using it, learning the shell and modding the kernel. That, or how everyone should just buy an Apple or something. Vista's the worst thing ever, remember?
-- "Wherever you go, there you are." -Buckaroo Banzai
For each pirated copy of windows, one more computer doesn't run an alternative OS.
This is one of the factors keeping the userbase of Linux down. It's a mystery to me why people choose a pirated version of Windows instead an open and free version of a Linux distribution. I guess ignorance is not bliss.
#find
Yayyyy, free software!
You might laugh but inside the cracking "scene" there are (or there were at least about 5 years ago when I used to do cracks for fun) different kinds of cracks, some where more "Zen" (no, no 1337 at that time) than others. The most dirty cracks where the ones where you actually had to *patch* the code to make it accept any password for example. A better approach would be a key-gen which would provide you with an acceptable key to register the program. Of course if you had a dongle, you simply *needed* a patch. Then there were other better "cracks" made for applications which password was validated on a server. Those could be cracked by patching or by providing the server software that simulated the real server communications.
I personally did cracks ranging from keygens to simple brute force patching JNZ to JZ, but never achieved a server simulation.
I must be in a timewarp here... 2 stories from the past on the front page..
PARADOX as stated above did this right after Vista came out..
Kill your TV
Right on the front page of the article it clearly says "4th March 2007".
Most likely their "slashdot" button has received some current activity as someone has finally gotten around to trying Vista...
I actually was talking retailer-specific, to clarify. Most (if not all) brick and mortar retailers have salespeople that don't know JACK about PCs. Or if they do, they're the type that think they know what they're talking about but only know what sales presentations they've been given by Intel, MS, etc. Not very technical.
Also, the big OEMs are much more concerned with hitting certain price points on margin than building PCs that have a decent quality anymore. Very simply, we don't build a PC for less than $550. That's because we don't skimp on crappy PSUs, chassis', and parts. Consequently, we can offer our customers a 3-year parts wty and don't have to worry about big issues (other than the usual PSU failures and HDs, which are minimized).
I'll blame MS to a certain point. The Windows Mail bugs are a pain in the ass, and if you followed their "capable" specs building machines for folks, you definitely saw performance problems. Thankfully, I never considered building Vista PCs without dual-core chips and 1GB so we've seen minimal performance problems from our customers.
That being said, the usual complaints of driver incompatibilities and third-party problems I place solely on the shoulders of those third-parties. MS puts their requirements out there and if they're improperly followed, of course you're going to have problems.
The Apple people love to point to Macs as being rock-solid, etc. But if they had to accommodate as many different third-parties as Microsoft does with PCs, guess what... MacOS would have the same problems. I mean, seriously, they've got what 10-12 specific models to keep tight control of? Oh yeah, they still have issues too.
And Linux... well... the day that you never have to touch a command line or the kernel for driver support (such as sound on my Santa Rosa notebook on Ubuntu) is the day i'll put it on all my machines. It's much MUCH better these days, but no.
So anyway, to sum up, i'll put some blame on MS, but more on all the third-parties retailers and manufacturers for what shortcomings Vista is perceived to have. That being said, my customers haven't had major issues.
People seem to forget the Windows XP launch, too. This is the same thing all over again except that Apple did a MUCH better job this time around of piling on. Between Slashdotters and Apple, the FUD has been flying.
-- "Wherever you go, there you are." -Buckaroo Banzai
Moderation -1
40% Flamebait
20% Troll
20% Insightful
Extra 'Flamebait' Modifier 0 (Edit)
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And we Linux users are called zealots! Some people can't stand criticism, I see, and some of them have mod points.
Now mod this one down too, astrograss boy. At least this comment deserves downmodding. In fact I'm modding it down myself with the "no karma bonus box".
See you on metamod day.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"It's true that MS is sellng Macs by proxy than I think it realizes. Given the choice of Vista or 'anything else' then people are taking the second option."
Actually given the choice, more people are choosing XP than OS X. I don't really think MS is in panic mode seeing as XP is still a MS product.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Microsoft recently released KB940510. Here is what it does. I've read it detects the Paradox BIOS emulator and the timerstop crack.
One thing to always consider: Just like it always is, one way or the other piracy plays into the strategy of getting this OS adopted.
Who cracks and/or installs pirated software? Mostly young techies. If they can get an OS for free or for cheaper than Vista, then Vista needs to be made "free" to compete in that sector - However, you can't just make the product free or reduce the price point, because that is only going to get you less money from people who are going to pay for it anyway and won't affect those who acquire software activations via other means.
MS knows that people who are going to pirate are generally not going to pay for an OS, and certainly not full price, and some people would pirate even if it cost $2.99.
I would think that one of the worst things that could happen to a new OS is to be rejected by the young technically savvy users - for so many reasons, but one reason is because they influence adoption; especially upgrades and new system purchases. Do you know when my parents and pretty much every other non-techie person I know decides to upgrade their OS, or buy anything computer related? After they ask my advice (or whoever they consider to be the most computer savvy person in their life). I am sure it is the same for a lot of us here.
Certainly I used to use pirated stuff sometimes before I could afford MSDN or worked in places that provided all the legit software I needed. I am not posting about whatever piracy is right or wrong here, that has been debated endlessly and it's a personal choice. One thing I can say is that (with the exception of a few times I have seen legit copies of Vista deactivate) it certainly is a lot less of a pain in the ass to use properly activated software.
I wonder though - if you plotted the adoption rate of Vista on a graph against MS expectations, my guess is that the further below expectations the adoption rate is, the less stringent activations are going to be and more cracks and workarounds (that work well) you're going to see.
There is only one known way to get "full functionality" from Vista, and that is with an install of "Fedora Hack" which eliminates the approximately 80% of Vista that is bugs, and the 20% that constrains the user from doing anything useful. There are a number of Fedora hacks to Vista available, the most recent being Fedora Core 8.
http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/11/1316209.shtml per discussion here and linked article here http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1267
~ Gabbi
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
Dare I reply to this... C'mon, put up your dukes moderator! I'll take you on. Oh yeah, what were they talking about? What's an Acer? What's XP? What's a Vista? Is that what I hook my internets up too?
Crack Halo 3 and...that other game that only runs on Vista, so there will be no possible reason whatsoever to run Vista. These guys are trimming the tops of the weeds instead of uprooting them.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You guys gloating over this can't see the forest for the trees.
Microsoft has calculated a bell-curve, plotting strength of activation vs usershare and revenue.
At one end of the curve is maximum-strength, impossible to crack activation scheme, which also shows low user share for Windows as cheapskates flock to Linux. At the other end of the curve is zero-activation which shows high windows share but zero revenue as everyone just pirates it. In the middle is medium-strength activation, where it's good enough to curtail casual piracy but not so good as to force dedicated pirates/cheapskates to Linux.
Everytime a crack is found for Windows activation, that's the same as Linux taking a shot in the gut, as it just takes away one of Linux's advantages (in fact, it's *main* advantage, being free as beer).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
There's a crack for Vista? Why?
Illegally downloading and installing Vista is like stealing paint so I can repaint my house Lime Green and Watermelon Pink. Sure, I'm smart enough to break into a hardware store and steal paint, but why would I steal ugly paint?
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Their Windows Genuine Advantage was disingenuous?
They can afford to make it free for ALL usage except corporate PCs. So they loose 2-4 billion in sales, they save 1billion in advertising & boxes & cds & activation infrastructure.
Distribution is easy, cost is only $1 for a dvd in every bloody PC mag in existance, every 3 months with included patches.
Making money of an OS is so 1980s.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.