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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.'"

3 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. ... But Windows STILL not dying... by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although this particular "activation" method has been around for awhile, it is interesting to see that microsoft never bothered to fix it.

    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 ... 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.

    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 ... MS.
    (and yes, linux can be pretty... but I'm the only one that uses it!)

  2. Re:Is it worth cracking Vista? by rucs_hack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You have to admit it's a novel approach, making a product so bad that hardly anyone is interested in cracking it.

    Who cares about a crack, I wouldn't run Vista if microsoft gave it away free, and I *like* windows...

  3. For each pirated copy one is saved by NWprobe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 /dev/brain find: no such file or directory