Microsoft to Revise WGA in Windows Vista SP1

[zekrahminator]

It's no secret that the Windows Genuine Advantage software, which is designed to protect legitimate users and stop piracy, does quite a lot of flagging and hindering legitimate users. While piracy of Windows Vista happens about half as often as piracy of Windows XP, you hear a lot more about Windows Vista WGA hacks that extend the grace period by several days/years. And so, Microsoft is going to change WGA so that there is less unjust flagging of legitimate users, and more pirate-catching. The new WGA will first fix the aforementioned grace period hack. Please click "Read full story" to see the exact methodology behind the fix. Another main thing that Microsoft aims to do is eliminate the Vista OEM hack, which tricks Windows into thinking it is being installed on a legitimate OEM system.
According to Microsoft group product manager Alex Kochis, this is how the new WGA will work as far as killing the grace period hack:

Under this new system, no features will be disabled. Instead it will be a notification-based experience similar in some ways to what we have done with XP. A user of a system that has not been activated and gone through the 30-day grace period to activate will, when logging in on the 31st day, see a dialog box on a plain black background. That will give them two options: Activate Windows now, which will bring up all the options to do this, and activate Windows later, which takes them directly to their desktop, which will be exactly the same as it had been the last time they used it, except that there will be a plain black background and a message in the lower right hand corner over the system tray telling them that their copy of Windows is not genuine.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[hacker111]

There is no way the government could ever catch all the Hackers/Pirates in the world so they could not either...Good Luck catching anyone

 

[Bob The Fish]

So basicly legitimate users will still suffer and non-legitimate users will just hack/crack it. like everything else.

 

[Firedomain]

put bluntly..... yes... yet again microsoft makes a stupid move among this hacker engulfed internet. i would say give up... but there trying 2 squeeze every dollar.
(soz, not exactly sober)

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Ironically, the people that crack Windows are the ones that avoid all this hassle, whilst paying customers have to worry about activation and failing WGA.

 

[MiST91]

so... basicly what Microsoft are doing now is revamping the WGA by making it so there is a small black box in the bottom right covering the system tray, i'm sure it will take years, if not centuries for hackers to figure out how to remove a black box *sarcastic*. No matter what microsoft do, even if Bill Gates came around to every persons house who have got windows vista and he checked it himself, there not going to stop people from using illegitimate copies of Windows, all there doing is pissing people off with legitimate, over priced copies of Vista

 

[Firedomain]

hmm.... now i wonder y some people prefer macs!
ah well... maybe microsoft will shit off enough people that the legit users will start being non-legit just 2 get rid of the damn WGA crap that they shouldn't be seeing!
i think we all know the legits are sooner or later gonna have a lot of problems with this. whether it b a microsoft server down or something, there gonna suffer.

 

[AddSub]

Wait, so all this does is makes it easier to "evaluate" Vista indefinitely? Interesting, but no thanks. Even "free" Vista is unattractive. Now, if it came with free versions of various MS products, a free version of whatever office suite, or a free copy of Windows XP or even Windows 2000, then maybe, MAYBE, I would consider "evaluating" Vista. Naw, scratch that. I want both copies of XP and Office, AND a generous pack of various games published by MS. All free of charge, full versions, at least 2-3 of em. Also, I want the ability to install my copy of Vista on up to dozen or so machines, that’s if I decide to keep it. Got it Billy?

Heh! Microsoft has seriously overestimated the potency of their marketing department. They are going to have to do better than “Aero”, restricting Dx10 to Vista, or revising their highly ineffective WGA. That ain’t incentive enough, considering the boatload of performance and stability issues Vista brings to the table. At this point, MS would have to literally pay me and/or shower me with freebies to use Vista.