yea this is kinda stupid cause for some reason i had two original copies of XP fail to register the first time through the years - btw is it like "illegal" that MS downloads those "widgets" to change the wallpaper and watermark?

Ah, but if it's truly legit, that can be fixed.

Yes, yes, I know, it's a lot of hassle, it shouldn't be that way, legit users get affected, blah, blah, blah... sorry, a few pirates ruin it for the rest of us. Sucks, but that's life.

For the record, I've administered over a thousand XP computers for multiple employers and clients... and I have yet to have a single one get locked down due to a false positive "illegal copy" notification. I'm sure it happens... but I've not seen it happen once.

LOL - my background is plain black anyway, and (almost without exception) has been for about fifteen years!

BTW - That APC album is awesome Arro - one of my top twenty of all time.

(and *whomph*, it changes back to black in an hour...)

Agreed. But then we'd hear a buncha whiners complaining about false positives... people with legit copies that get locked down.

Meh, I say, let Microsoft do whatever needs to be done to stop piracy of their product. If we truly don't like how we are affected, we can buy another OS.

If I pirated software, I'd display the black screen as a badge of pride, smiling with my money in my pocket. It really *isn't* much of a deterrent.

Now, if it were a pink background... then yeah, there'd be hell to pay!

It's their OS; they've given you a license to use it. And if I'm not mistaken, they've got wording in their licensing that states that they can update it whenever they dang well please, much to the consternation of those who don't like that sorta intrusion.

Me, I don't care; update away!

Microsoft haven't aimed this at legitimate users of their software you know It's doubtful that it will affect (m)any such users. I wouldn't worry about it

If it does, then gripe to Microsoft. That said, if you're already doing automatic updates, you've *already* been validated... you'd likely already know if you were running rogue.

Not necessarily... they could alter *any* of the files... up to and including explorer.exe, if they wanted to.

Wallpaper set by group policy would likely behave the same as a login script. And even if the computer fetched a group policy update, it'd still slip back in an hour.

Well, there's always (supposedly) a batch of (supposedly) legit users who complain that these checks "hurt those who purchase the sofware legitimately". I'm sure it happens, but, again, I have yet to see a single instance of it happening. On those cases where you change a BUNCH of hardware (this REALLY doesn't happen much in a business IT environment), you *might* have to call for reactivation... but dude, I'm a gamer, so I change hardware every few months... and I have yet to have to call for reactivation.

Percentage wise, I doubt there are many false positives. That said, with the sheer number of Windows installations out there, even a hundredth of a percentage point is something for Microsoft to consider.

Personally, I'm disappointed that Microsoft didn't stick to their guns with Vista's validation, which required that you activate within 30 days or be forced to use a limited functionality version. But Microsoft caved to the pressure.

Same here. Never seen it happen and it's never happened to me even constantly swapping out graphics cards/hdds/ram at home.

*shrugs* Maybe the update is horribly flawed but Bill likes us so we're the exceptions to the rule

There are updates every month that add new 'features' and you have two choices over updates that you either download and update or don't - it's your choice

If I were MS and my money was being stolen then I'd be much much tougher than they are.

I used to work in a local PC shop back in 2001 - 2003 and there was an XP Pro corporate/enterprise copy doing the rounds on a key that didn't require activation. You'd be suprised or maybe not at the owners of PC's who used this key. It's not understatement that 80% of customers who'd got XP Pro on their PC had this illegal copy and they ranged from Policemen, solicitors (lawyers), surgeons, doctors, dentists, in fact most professions going (those who can afford and should also know better). We used to do maint contracts and we even saw it in use in a couple of schools.

As for large companies, It does happen although I think more often than not it's not by choice but simply poor quality control and management of their IT departments. I work for a massive organisation and I'm just in the process of auditing all our workstations on site and I've already highlighted a number of anomalies (which have now been corrected)

I have come across the 'false positives' as you put it a number of times with XP. Especially when WGA was first introduced. I knew quite a few people with legitimate OEM installs of XP that were being told they weren't genuine etc... I tried sorting it out on one PC and in the end used a WGA removal tool to stop it complaining.

I personally don't find MS's anti-pircay measures particularly intrusive, far less so than some of the ludicrous ones seen on some games that now come out. Don't know what the fuss is about anyway, there will be a crack out for this new measure before it even goes live.

Lmao, so true

I've taken the sceenshot from that news article and set it as my wallpaper.

TAKE THAT MICROSOFT!

If we all did that then it would render the whole exercise mute.

But anyway, back to the age old argument, Microsoft own the product, and I salute any effort they make to protect what is theirs.

What about the iTunes downloads that will only play on an iPod?

The World is full of this sort of thing, but only MS seem to get a bashing for it.