Windows Genuine Advantage (spit)

[Metrogirl]

So off I went to Windoze update yesterday. There in the 'critical' section was a package called Windows Genuine Advantage Notification Tool which I was supposed to install. This was new to me - I know about WGA of course, but a 'notification tool'? So I did some research.

 

OK, I own my copies of Windows. I mean, I have a legitimate copy, in fact I have real licences for nearly each PC in the house as evidenced by the sticker on the side. However being a busy person I can't be arsed to go through the activation process every time I reinstall Windows or upgrade enough to exceed the points that say it's a different system, so I use a generic VLK installation disc. Yes, that's technically wrong, but it saves hassle. So I have to satisfy the WGA mechanism by some subterfuge.

 

However on 25th April, Microsoft started rolling out the new WGA Notification tool, the next level in the WGA anti-piracy mechanism. What's with this word 'Advantage' anyway? What advantage does it give anyone, except Microsoft?

 

Apparently it works by testing your PID each time Windows starts. If it's not a valid copy, you get a nag screen before you can log on. You get another nag screen every hour or so, for ever. You get a system tray icon which nags you too. If you use Automatic Updates you'll get this 'tool' automatically. Fortunately if you select 'custom' on a manual update, you can choose not to install it. Basically most users who leave the system set to defaults will get it without any choice in the matter.

 

Seems it's been tried in some countries for a while but yesterday they added US, UK, Australia, NZ and Malaysia to the countries forced to accept it. There are some supposed fixes on the internet, but so far I've only seen stuff that looks dubious. Apparently you can 'uninstall' it - but we all know how successful that is likely to be. Also you can allegedly delete the contents of the WGA data file in the system Application Data directory tree and set it to read-only to fix it. Since I didn't install the package, I can't test the fixes.

 

Some writeup on the topic here. There's also some discussion on it in their forum.

 

I wonder how this affects XP running on a Mac? How does the hardware check work on 'odd' equipment? I'd guess the same as on any other system. Hmm, what next, Microsoft?

[munky]

Yet another reason why folks will be keen to leave the windows platform in droves. Nice one Microsoft! What with your buggy, feature-poor and extremely LATE os release coming out next year, on top of treating your customers like criminals... wow, you've got to be on the right track to keeping a loyal fanbase.

 

You morons.

[Korrupted]

Yet another reason to avoid Windows Update. Or use Firefox to manually download the updates you want.

[Swad]

That's pretty much one of the lamest things MS has ever done.

 

That's beyond annoying.

[Korrupted]

Mini rant: Doesn't it seem like the companies/our government(US) want to take away more and more of our freedoms when it comes to software and hardware? *shrug..* Seems like it to me anyway. If this post is irrelevant, feel free to delete it. Just had to get that off my chest.

[munky]

is it just to do with software and hardware? ask yourself that.

 

signed mr "foia my ass" munky

[Colonel]

Good old Micro$oft. They're always there to spoil the fun. I hate them.

[rogabean]

Grrr I hate to be the one to *defend* them... but it's their software. They have a right to try every means they can to crack down on piracy. Sure it sucks... and it gives people more reasons not to use their software, but it may actually make someone who was running a non legit copy to go and get legit... so it works for them. *Most* users will not be affected by this notification as *most* users are running the version of XP that came preinstalled on their OEM computer. In reality it won't cause much of a backlash from the general public. It's more of an annoyance to 1) people who downloaded it and run it without paying for it and 2) the one that I fit in, people who reinstall often and hate having to call to reactivate because they are over he limit of Internet activations.

 

So to spin the other way... how many times have you installed a copy of Windows only to activate it, and then royally screw it up to the point it needed to be reloaded an hour later?

 

So yeah... I can see where this will be a royal pain, but remember two things.

 

1) it will not affect *most* people

 

2) it WILL be cracked. that is a fact.

[kaleph]

1) it will not affect *most* people

Believe me, it will affect *everybody* in Brazil. I can count with my hand fingers the number of people I know that own a genuine version of Windows. Oh god, i can see it already friends calling me "how can i disable this message?"...

But you're right, microsoft is in its right to protect its software. And you're also right: it WILL be cracked

[rogabean]

Believe me, it will affect *everybody* in Brazil. I can count with my hand fingers the number of people I know that own a genuine version of Windows. Oh god, i can see it already friends calling me "how can i disable this message?"...

But you're right, microsoft is in its right to protect its software. And you're also right: it WILL be cracked

 

 

Umm no offense... it's supposed to affect those people. Tell them to pony up the cash and get legit when they call you.

[Swad]

But like you, I have had to reinstall a thousand times - I do it yearly if not more often.

 

If MS would make a better OS, we wouldn't be having this issue. Since they don't, I resent their efforts.

[thrunner]

There is a way for users to turn off the notifier but it may be turned back on in the future as they try to download the latest updates to IE or Media player or take advantage of the Buy Local offers through their local system builder.

Much ado about nothing, I think. Do people actually care about these features/products anymore? Just update security features manually if needed as posted earlier.

[amalgam]

But like you, I have had to reinstall a thousand times - I do it yearly if not more often.

 

If MS would make a better OS, we wouldn't be having this issue. Since they don't, I resent their efforts.

 

Uh, gonna have to take you to task here. I just checked the install date for this box, it's 08/22/2004.

 

It has been everywhere, Usenet, IRC, ftp, etc. It has had literally hundreds upon hundreds of programs installed, hacked, uninstalled, etc. It runs multiple versions of many tools, browsers, email clients, prgramming suites, OCR, office apps and much more. There's 12megs of {censored} in the \Windows directory, 1gig of {censored} in \system32.

 

The registry is so big, a search for a single entry can be measured in tens of minutes. It has 2 200gig drives, and both are constantly maxed out, forcing me to burn DVDs when I'd rather just carve away on some software.

 

It's on 24/7, simultaneously doing torrents & what not.

 

And worse, I'm a pig with it. So that means as long as the A/V software isn't screeching, the firewall isn't flashing me, I just let the old stuff hang around. It is just full of junk. But I'm comfortable with it.

 

But it doesn't crash, it boots in 18 seconds, and it just works. It's all off the shelf stuff, and Windows seems quite happy.

 

Sitting beside this box is one with an old Abit board that started the celery overclocking craze. It's gone from a 300mhz to it's final state, a 733mhz p3, and from Windows For Workgroups 3.11 to w95a, then b, then c. Never a clean install, upgrade only, and it still runs every day, and has since that abit board first came out ( I don't care to remember how long ago that was).

 

I do not think MS stuff is any better, or any worse than whatever else is out there.

 

The boxes I play with OS X (and everything else under the sun) on, I EXPECT to break. I'm deliberately dinking with things far beyond their intended purpose, and that sort of thing should happen.

 

Windows is the most popular OS, the richest software house in the world, so it's no surprise then that it is also the most pirated software in the world. So, I also got no beef that MS takes a few steps now and again to protect their profit margins.

 

What I do find disturbing, is that no one here seems concerned with the TPM chip, or as wound up over Apple's not-too-subtle "piracy is bad" easter egg, or their encrypted binaries. And because Apple is the hardware AND the OS, they can and very well might taken much harsher steps to control where they'll find their OS being used in the very near future.

 

Not one person has yet been able to come up with a single "benefit to the consumer" reason each Intel Mac sold comes with an active TPM chip.

 

BTW, I would like to point out that the very reason this forum came to be was in fact, just because a pirated copy of a then very beta-ish x86 OS X got passed around.

 

That damned TPM chip is there for a reason, and some day, if Apple is as successful getting increased market share as most here would like, that TPM chip is gonna become far more orwellian than Microsoft's meager efforts.

 

Yeah, I know what some are gonna say, "well look, it wasn't so hard to bypass, it's practically meaningless". Yup, for now. Does anyone not consider what it COULD do if the OS were fully bound to it?

 

And if they did, so what? It's their chosen business model. MS is OK, OS X is OK, Linux is OK, all OSs have their qualities, or they would simply die on the vine.

 

Apple is just _A_ choice, not THE choice, or the others would have all gone away a long time ago.

[Ouch]

Apparently it works by testing your PID...

what is the test? Just change your product key to one that generates a valid PID and you should be ok, shouldn't you?

[Metrogirl]

what is the test? Just change your product key to one that generates a valid PID and you should be ok, shouldn't you?

 

That's true, but getting a valid PID is no easy feat if you're using a VLK version. The first pass at PID checking involved testing for the famous leaked Dell Volume License Key, which if found, refused to allow you to install SP1. Then they became more cunning and blocked updates on any PID which didn't resolve to 640 as the second block of digits - in fact they had to reissue private keys to several companies as a result of that move.

 

The now infamous MS-4in1 keygen uses a stolen private key to generate valid PIDs for VLK installations. Remember that using a VLK distribution is the only simple way to avoid the activation hassle. The problem is that the MS-4in1 keygen will always create a final digit block in the form "23xxx" since this is a function of the private key. The latest WGA tests for this, and if it finds it, you're obvioiusly a nasty pirate according to Microsoft.

 

If you use one of the brute-force tools to generate your PID you're likely to get a non-640 value, and even if you do get 640, you might not get the 0-1000000 or 4xx-5xx range which is also tested for as valid or not.

 

You can get your hands on a real VLK machine and use one of the tools to reverse the PID to the install key; that would work. Or, thinking about it, you could hack setupp.ini on your VLK install CD to accept an OEM key and use the key that's on the side of your OEM machine, which would be more 'honest' since that's yours and genuine. I haven't tried that, but I probably will now I've thought of it - the concept seems sound.

 

If you're interested in how the PID is calculated, this site gives you a breakdown. The setupp.ini information is widely available on the internet.

[Ouch]

Oh well those of us who have access to legit vlk's should be glad.

[Victor Gil]

Uh, gonna have to take you to task here. I just checked the install date for this box, it's 08/22/2004.

 

It has been everywhere, Usenet, IRC, ftp, etc. It has had literally hundreds upon hundreds of programs installed, hacked, uninstalled, etc. It runs multiple versions of many tools, browsers, email clients, prgramming suites, OCR, office apps and much more. There's 12megs of {censored} in the \Windows directory, 1gig of {censored} in \system32.

 

The registry is so big, a search for a single entry can be measured in tens of minutes. It has 2 200gig drives, and both are constantly maxed out, forcing me to burn DVDs when I'd rather just carve away on some software.

 

It's on 24/7, simultaneously doing torrents & what not.

 

And worse, I'm a pig with it. So that means as long as the A/V software isn't screeching, the firewall isn't flashing me, I just let the old stuff hang around. It is just full of junk. But I'm comfortable with it.

 

But it doesn't crash, it boots in 18 seconds, and it just works. It's all off the shelf stuff, and Windows seems quite happy.

 

You're a very lucky person, i have to install Windows almost every 2 month, like you i've been in every imaginable place with my computer, have A LOT of programs installed, music and any othere s**t you can think but Windows starts to become slow after a while and i have to install it again, once i thought it was because of this and i only install the most basic software i need and the installation last like 4 month but it was boring to use it with so much careful.

[v-linkz]

Snagged from 4chan a few days ago...forgot who the actual poster was.

 

[other]

Took me under half an hour to edit the file and enable windows updates again.

 

What pissed me off though is that my copy is legit and was before this thing.

[dponmac]

I dont get what the big deal is? Your mad because MS doesn't want you to steal their software?? It's not that hard to activate even when you do reinstall. If it doesn't work through the internet, you call and tell them whats up. Works for me everytime. Even if you make some {censored} story up they still give you a n activation key. A client of mine decided to install his home copy of XP professional on about 15 computers in his office. He decided then to call MS and get it activated (pretty ballsy if you ask me). They GAVE him a key that worked on every single machine!!!

[rogabean]

I dont get what the big deal is? Your mad because MS doesn't want you to steal their software?? It's not that hard to activate even when you do reinstall. If it doesn't work through the internet, you call and tell them whats up. Works for me everytime. Even if you make some {censored} story up they still give you a n activation key. A client of mine decided to install his home copy of XP professional on about 15 computers in his office. He decided then to call MS and get it activated (pretty ballsy if you ask me). They GAVE him a key that worked on every single machine!!!

 

 

Ummm it is in fact a pain in the arse when you have to call in an activation on a machine (the same damned machine) 7 times in a single day because of a problem with the drivers supplied by the motherboard manufacturer that took a while to figure out.

 

(this actually happened)

 

it's also a big deal if you don't have phone service where your computer is and you are over the Internet activation limits.

 

It's also a damned inconvenience to have to call someone. (truth be told I have anxiety issues calling anyone... so it's a bigger issue to me).

 

I wouldn't bypass it if they'd let me Activate on the Net a reasonable amount of times. 2 is over the lifetime of the software is NOT reasonable. I'd say 3 per year until the the software is EOL'd is reasonable. Face it.. sometime you just gotta reinstall.

[jonajona]

I don't want to be an @ss, but I'm here to defend Microsoft. It's their software and they have the right to defend it. As far as it not being the best OS, well, don't use it. I really don't get this "hate microsoft" thing. Truthfully, it's a little too old. And not even funny anymore. A lot of people complain that the OS doesn't come with a lot of things. But then again, the EU council screwed microsoft because they had windows media player built in, while, Apple has iLife built in and they don't complain about that. WTF.

I'm trying out Vista right now, and I have to say that it's far more superior to OSX. Especially with the built-in media center. WOW!! Front row is nothing compared to Media Center.

Don't get me wrong, I love OSX. It's clean,.. and well, it looks pleasing! But it falls short when it comes to productivity. Try using Dreamweaver on a Mac! Too freaking slow.

[Ouch]

Of course microsoft have a right to protect their product from pirates but its when these measures begin to inconvenience legitimate users that we begin to question. For example there are already a number of work arounds to activation which anyone determined enough to pirate the os will be able to use to avoid the problem. So it's legitmate users who end up jumping through hoops to get the OS working and what's the point of that?

 

You brought up some other issues but they are not really related to the topic so i won't comment on them here, but instead open another topic.

[rogabean]

Microsoft can protect their product from pirates... but they should do their best to not harm legitimate customers in the process. You will not earlier in this thread I partially support MS. I don't support making law abiding folks feel like criminals. that is all we are trying to say.

[OryHara]

Umm no offense... it's supposed to affect those people. Tell them to pony up the cash and get legit when they call you.

 

Or use a cracked winlogon.exe like I do. That works wonders. Companies DO NOT have the right to install spyware on your machine. WGA is spyware. WPA is spyware. Its against the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to view the contents of one's PC. But they are 'Microsoft', they have been breaking the law for years, but because their rich the government turns their heads. No company has the so called 'right' to see what is installed on your machine. If they did, that means that I have the right to come into the Microsoft building and look at their code. I always modify that EULAs before I install anything. If they can change the contract at any time, then so can I.

 

I run WPA cracks because I don't want to fool with activation after I swap a board from a customer's machine. And im not going to. If that means im breaking the law then so be it. Then again. Microsoft is breaking the law by bundling IE with their machines. So what makes them right and me wrong?

 

I would never do business with anyone who thinks that a company has some rediculous 'right' over their customers.

 

"The more you tighten your grip vadar the more star systems will slip through your fingers." - Leia