[Kosh]

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/10/23/1255235.shtml


Then Vista really does suck

[IceFire]

Read that this afternoon...definitely.

[Nuke]

i built my machine to be capable of an sli upgrade at some point. this better not **** that up.

[jr2]

ROFL, did you read some of those comments? 

Also, I would like to point this out: M$ gave AutoPatcher a C&D.  AutoPatcher allowed you to download M$ patches as one file, then pick and choose which ones you wanted... extremely useful if one of the computers in your care has no connection / dial-up.  I've used it for years.  A support tech's dream come true.  FZAAT!! not anymore.  Thx, M$.  If anything, I would have hoped that they would have included an AutoPatcher-esque option in Windoze Update... guess not.  You can probably guess the tone of the comments.

[colecampbell666]

The comments are FUNNY.And true. I've seen Vista, and it's not pretty.

[CP5670]

This can occur on XP too, not just Vista. I have legal XP copies but have loaded cracks onto all my installs for exactly this reason, as I switch out hardware fairly frequently.

[karajorma]

Yep. XP activation is based on it checking the hardware in your machine. If two or more of the pieces of hardware it feels were important are changed it could easily decide that it's not longer valid and require you to reactivate.

Out of interest does it only give you 3 days like Vista or does it go back to the original 30 days?

[Roanoke]

shades of IIRC sony and the invisible rootkit fiasco from a while ago....

[CP5670]

Yep. XP activation is based on it checking the hardware in your machine. If two or more of the pieces of hardware it feels were important are changed it could easily decide that it's not longer valid and require you to reactivate.

Out of interest does it only give you 3 days like Vista or does it go back to the original 30 days?

It's supposed to give you 14 days, but it can occasionally fail to work properly and not give you any time at all, so you have to reactivate immediately or Windows won't start up. This happened to me at one point and I found that going into safe mode allows you to get in (to backup files, apply a crack, etc.), but only once. It seems the "this is safe mode" message prevents the activation thing from coming up the first time, but after that you need to either change a registry key to reset the message or reinstall Windows (on top of the existing install) to do the same.

[Kosh]

Yep. XP activation is based on it checking the hardware in your machine. If two or more of the pieces of hardware it feels were important are changed it could easily decide that it's not longer valid and require you to reactivate.

Out of interest does it only give you 3 days like Vista or does it go back to the original 30 days?

The OEM version of XP doesn't have this kind of "protection" though, just a serial number. Since all of the bootlegged copies of XP are OEM's (at least here they are), it's just another example of why, thanks to copy protection, pirated copies work better than legit ones do.

[jr2]

FYI, a heads up... the XP Pro Corporate edition doesn't have activation... I bought XP Pro, got ("acquired" ) the Corp edition, slipstreamed SP2 onto it, never ever activated it... your only problem is from WGA, and that can be bypassed by changing the XP key via a keygen and applying a crack, then installing WGA... M$ thanks you for buying "genuine" software, offers you complementary offers for "genuine" users, and you ROTFLYAO.  I installed my XP Pro on my GA-6BXD (dual-processor slot 1 2x AGP)... it re-activated about every month for seemingly no reason... (might have had something to do with my BIOS settings being reset every time the compy was shut off, prolly because I used a patched BIOS to support a slot 1 > socket 370 w/ 1.4 GHz Celeron.)  I installed XP Corp... no problems.  M$, bite me.  (This also comes in handy because I don't feel like shelling out $100-200 for each and every one of my computers that I use XP on.)

[Nuke]

im never gonna buy another os from microsoft. not thill they ger trheir head outta their ass and quit with the anti-piracy measures which frankly, just dont work. it makes no sence to attack your customers with such useless and arbitrary limitations. ive probibly given them a thousand bucks for operating systems and other software which is of rather poor quality. very little of that software can still be used. ive owned a license of 95, 2 of 98, one of xp and one of vista, a copy of office and several version of flight simulator. so its not like i havent contributed to their wealth. but theyre just not listening to their customers, and they dont deserve the buisness that they get.

[achtung]

Reportedly Microsoft's XP/Vista WGA "Activation" servers borked up and around 12000 legitimate systems started complaining they were pirated. On XP/Vista that means it will stop working after so many days of being unable to properly authenticate. On Vista that means various OS functionality is also disabled.

Supposedly happened about a month or two ago.

[Unknown Target]

If Linux ever starts being for normal people and not just for coders and tech people (I don't care what you say, the distros, nomatter how easy, are not as simple to install/run as Windows, and I won't budge on the point so don't argue), I'll switch to that first chance I get. Until then, I'm going to be riding the Windows XP boat until no software supports it.

[ZmaN]

isn't this why we pirate vista instead of buying it?

ANyways, I would probably end up dual booting Vista Ultimate and XP Pro that I can work on whatever I feel like.

idk we'll see.