Microsoft invalidates legal copies of Windows

Users of the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage feature, just about all XP and Vista users, could have come face to face with a lovely pirate message from MS over the weekend. A major outage on the servers that handle the WGA process meant that users of XP and Vista may have been unable to validate their legal copy of the OS if they attempted an upgrade or installation. The ‘invalidated’ PCs would not have shut down but the OS would have had its functionality reduced, features such as Aero would have been turned off. Phil Liu, the WGA Program Manager, selflessly stated on the MS forums that

I will personally resolve this issue before I go to sleep - whether or not it is Tuesday I sleep. My goal is to identify a FIX for this issue - afterwards get you all what you are looking for, an explanation and cause.

Fortunately for Phil the issue was fixed on Saturday and according to the WGA blog

We’ve been receiving reports on our forum and through customer service starting last night that Windows Vista validations have been failing on genuine systems. It looks now as though the issue has been resolved and validations are being processed successfully.

If there’s anyone out there who had an issue with validating their Windows OS please share your experience here at Our Picks.

Featured Tags microsoft, vista, windows, xp
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Posted in Software by JB