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WGA bites legitimate customers

27 August 2007 17:06 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 5 comments

Microsoft has blamed a server error for a glitch in its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program that incorrectly reported many legitimate installations of Windows XP and Windows Vista as pirated. WGA is a tool used to fight against piracy of the Windows operating system and is delivered through Automatic Updates. An XP installation found to be pirated is blocked from software updates and for Vista, some features are disabled.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) estimates that piracy accounts for $29 billion in lost revenue for the software industry every year. Needless to say, unhappy users felt compelled to leave comments about their experience. "You really ought to work on making WGA actually an advantage. Right now, users of pirate copies of Windows had an extra couple days of use," a user calling himself "Mhornyak" commented on the WGA blog.

He also added: "I also want to say, because I know how painful all-nighters are: Congrats to the WGA team for getting things working again. It's not your fault that the company policy is bad."

Source:
Yahoo (NF)

Permalink to this article

Pirate website shut down, 2,000 DVDs seized (1 September 2007)

Microsoft exec talks about piracy 'benefits' (13 March 2007)

WGA update phones home (9 March 2007)

Microsoft makes updates to WGA (20 February 2007)

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Discuss this article!
plazma247 (Newbie) 31 August 2007 8:51
haah looks to me he was halfway putting his money where his mouth was, then he turned YELLA and decided not to publically bash microsoft mistake in fear of pissing off microsoft. [ + quote]
RNR1995 (Inactive) 31 August 2007 10:11
WGA is crap [ + quote]
pmshah (Newbie) 1 September 2007 20:49
There are modded versions of XP-SP2 available on the net that pass WGA & allow updates from the M$ site directly. Some install in less than 10 mimutes flat. What more can ask for? I wonder what percentage does $29 billion make up as compared to total revenues of all software officially sold? Would give one an idea of piracy levels. [ + quote]
Unfocused (Junior Member) 2 September 2007 11:01
I know that this doesn't happen frequently, but I've read about it enough to really make you wonder what "advantages" genuine software provides. Never seen a problem on pirated/cracked/patched systems. As far as updates, Firefox has a plug-in that serves as an excellent workaround, and there are at least two other sites that offer the MS updates. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 2 September 2007 14:01
WGA= When Geeks Attack. :P [ + quote]