Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 7th Sep 2008 20:23 UTC
Probably one of the most hated parts of Windows are its anti-piracy measures - product activation and Windows Genuine Advantage. While most people acknowledge Microsoft's right to implement these measures, many have also been bitten by the measures' shortcomings, such as server outages or false positives. Microsoft blogger Ed Bott has been monitoring WGA since its inception, and in 2006 and 2007 he didn't give a passing grade to WGA ("a big fat F"). This year, the situation has improved somewhat, earning Microsoft a passing grade - barely.
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Member since:2006-01-02
Member since:2006-11-08
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I had a machine whose Motherboards kept failing, complex issue, every time it did, a reinstall of Windows was needed. In the end, I was repeatedly calling up the Microsoft helpline, reciting strings of numbers over the phone, and copying down other strings of numbers, and being accused of piracy over the phone by some help desk drone. It's not fun having to call Microsoft.
Member since:2008-09-08
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2005-07-24
Now only if they could stop people from bypassing it altogether :-).
I found a crack that does it very well, generates a new code, breaks the WGA, and all of Microsoft's tools work great. Only works on pre-Vista I believe.
I searched for the crack because I had several customers who received false-positives from WGA and I *HATE* calling Microsoft for anything. So I just re-entered their license key, tried the crack that way, if that didn't work I just generated a new key, placed it into the system, locked it down, then verified that it was successful with a little genuine-check utility.
THEN, I had to upgrade WGA to get rid of the stupid "You may be a victim of software counterfeiting." message. Worked every time, and as recently as a week ago.
Not one has been flagged since ( which is good, saves me time - and saves my customers money ).
No, I won't share the crack :-).
--The loon