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Microsoft Says Free Windows 10 Upgrades For Pirates Will Be Unsupported

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-are-dead-to-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this story about some of the fine print to Microsoft's offer of Windows 10 upgrades to pirates. "When Microsoft confirmed it will offer free Windows 10 upgrades to pirates worldwide, many were shocked. VentureBeat has been trying to get more details from the company, which disclosed today that after PCs with pirated copies of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are upgraded to Windows 10, they will remain in a 'non-genuine' status and Microsoft will not support them. 'With Windows 10, although non-genuine PCs may be able to upgrade to Windows 10, the upgrade will not change the genuine state of the license,' a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. 'Non-genuine Windows is not published by Microsoft. It is not properly licensed or supported by Microsoft or a trusted partner. If a device was considered non-genuine or mislicensed prior to the upgrade, that device will continue to be considered non-genuine or mislicensed after the upgrade. According to industry experts, use of pirated software, including Non-genuine Windows, results in a higher risk of malware, fraud — identity theft, credit card theft, etc. — public exposure of your personal information, and a higher risk for poor performance or feature malfunctions.' Yet this doesn't provide enough answers. After a pirate upgrades to Windows 10 for free, does this 'non-genuine' version expire and become unusable after a certain period of time? Does no support mean no security updates for pirates?"

2 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Re: This is pretty common. by symbolset · · Score: 5, Funny

    Reboot. * Install all updates. Reboot three times. * Uninstall all third party software and start over. * Reinstall the OS and drivers, all service packs, all patches. * Uninstall all third party hardware and start over. * Still a problem? Contact the PC manufacturer.

    * Check for proper function.

    There. Paste that to a file. You have Microsoft OS support forever.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  2. Re: This is pretty common. by wiggles · · Score: 4, Funny

    If that's windows support, linux support is as follows:

    Check /var/log messages for errors. Find cryptic bizarro language pointing to some subsystem you've never heard of. Craft messages as follows and post to Slashdot:

    "Linux is terrible! I'm going back to Windows! I can't even get function XYZ to work! Every time I try, error message $ERR shows up in my /var/log/messages!"

    Wait one hour before you get a response as follows:

    "You moron, All you have to do to get that to go away is edit $CONFIG_FILE and restart $DAEMON! Windows sucks!"

    Problem solved.