Posted by Anonymous1253 Day ago, There are 18 comments, 47922 views
"Recently I've been hearing questions from journalists, other bloggers and customers about what exactly makes systems fail validation. Specifically, I have been asked for two things. First, a breakdown of the kinds of piracy that are detected by WGA and which are the most common. And second, what is the rate of “false positives” with WGA (falsely identifying a copy of Windows as counterfeit)?"First on the question of what makes up the WGA failures. About 1 in 5 of the 300 million PCs that have run WGA validation fail. That is pretty much in line with industry numbers for software piracy. By volume most of the validation failures detected by WGA are a result of installs that use a stolen volume licensing key. Using stolen volume license keys has been a well known method of counterfeiting Windows XP for a while. This accounts for around 80% of the failures today. As an example, one stolen license key from a US university ended up on over a million PCs in China. The rest of the failures are caused by a mix of other types of counterfeiting and piracy, including a variety of forms of tampering, hacking and other forms of installing unlicensed copies. Sometimes people try to hack Windows Product Activation itself (often not totally successfully either) and other times people try to modify files to prevent XP from needing to activate at all. Some failures are caused by improper attempts to install or repair software on an otherwise genuine PC. All of these activities will result in WGA validation failures and they should. I think it's super important to be clear about the idea of 'false positives' so I'd like to take this opportunity to explain a bit about how WGA works and why when some people believe they have a legit license for Windows but WGA fails to validate their installed copy. To be precise, an actual 'false positive' would occur if WGA identifed a specific copy of windows installed on a system as non-genuine or unlicensed when in fact it was genuine and licensed. Of the hundreds of millions of WGA validations to date, only a handful of actual false positives have been seen. Most of these were due to data entry errors that were quickly corrected and only occurred for a short period of time. Given the extremely small number of technical failures of WGA why else might someone think that their system was falsely identified as running counterfeit Windows? If they aren't actual 'false positives' what are they? It turns out there are a number of scenarios that could result in a WGA validation failure that a user might be surprised by or even deny including the following few scenarios: Scenario 1: the PC user was sold counterfeit but it looks genuine to them so their first reaction is shock followed by disbelief and frustration (occasionally people seem to contact us right at this point!) but in truth these people are victims and the product is really a counterfeit made to look like genuine. When people are ripped of this way we offer to replace their product with a genuine copy if they fill out a counterfeit report and send it and the counterfeit into us. So far we've provided hundreds of free copies of Windows to users who've been ripped by high-quality counterfeit, and we plan to continue this offer. Scenario 2: the PC user really doesn't know that they did something wrong, such as install the same copy and key to more than one PC at the same time. If a customer such as this bought their copy at a reputable outlet, a national chain or received Windows pre-installed on a PC from a major manufacturer they might believe that what they have is 'genuine' but they don't realize that they're violating the license in a way that results in a WGA failure. The solution to this is really educational, there are some requirements as to how Windows can be installed, these are of course spelled out in the EULA and for many are common knowledge. Scenario 3: a friend or acquaintance offers to 'fix' or repair your system or offers a 'free upgrade' by installing their copy of Windows on your machine. as in the scenario above, if you didn't now that wasn't allowed under the license you have for Windows you might be surprised when WGA fails. The challenge in scenario 3 and 4 is that there is no way to tell the difference from someone unknowingly pirating the software, with good intent or not, and someone who does this for a living to rip off consumers and/or Microsoft. Scenario 4: you take your PC to get a new video card or hard drive or to be worked on for some other reason at a repair shop, in the process of the upgrade a new [improper] copy of Windows is installed. Sometimes this happens because those doing the work will take shortcuts to install a copy of Windows that is laying around or is convenient. Often times this is done with a key and a copy of Windows that's handy for the repair person but is really the wrong version or edition or installation for your system. WGA detects some of these miss-matches and will fail systems that are installed with versions of Windows that aren't licensed properly. For customers who find themselves in this situation there's a number of solutions available none of which require that they purchase a new copy of Windows. For all of these scenarios when validation fails the WGA website will offer a detailed explanation and an opportunity to print that detailed explanation in the form of a report explaining why a system failed. The owner of the PC can take this report to the place that sold them the their PC or performed the latest install of Windows to get help. While in the examples above the owner of the PC may not intend to do anything wrong and intentions are often innocent, these are in fact forms of software piracy. These scenarios are not real 'false positives' because that the WGA software did perform as designed and accurately detect an install of Windows that was not licensed for the PC it was installed on or was wrong for some other reason. Still our team takes the customer experience in these scenarios very seriously. Many teams across the company are working really hard, particularly our marketing folks, to educate customers about the benefits of genuine Windows and encourage them to ask for genuine software when buying a PC. We also have very hard working legal and investigative teams that work to help level the playing field for honest resellers by identifying and taking legal action against resellers who sell counterfeit and pirated Windows to consumers. Lastly, I would like to ensure everyone that we investigate all credible reports we receive of false positives (though sometimes it's hard to chase down the details we need to try to repro reported failures). I hear in the halls sometimes of reported failures taking place but when the dev and test teams reproduce the steps reported the result is, far more often than not, that the software performed as designed and the failure was due to the software in fact being counterfeit and the customer simply not wanting to believe it.
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by shardfinger on 2006-07-19 17:16:55
Download WGA Turnoff auto update restart go to internet options in control panel,or tools go to programs manage addons disable WGA,turn on auto update relax
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by Fast007 on 2006-07-19 18:56:49
this is bull s h i t , wga is spyware
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by bsacheli on 2006-07-19 19:47:25
ive never had a problem with my Pirated copy of XP i just refuse to install Windows Genuine Advantage and then later when i go to update it lets me install all the updates
JUST DONT INSTALL WGA
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by JEGOR on 2006-07-19 21:33:15
Hola, espero puedan ayudarme, relice todos los pasos para validar mi xp p2 pirata y ya no pone trabas , el problema es que bajo algun programa como el WMPlayer 11 y si bien lo descarga a mi PC cuando lo quiero instalar me dice que debo validar mi xp. Como debo hacer???
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by luis12 on 2006-07-19 21:51:36
THIS IS GOOD NEWS FOR US! - Microsoft Sued Over Antipiracy Software, Microsoft is feeling the heat after an aggrieved computer user in Washington filed a class-action lawsuit over the company's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software-verification program........WGA consists of antipiracy software that collects information from a Windows user's PC to check whether the computer is running an illegal copy of Microsoft's Windows operating system..........
The WGA program, which Microsoft launched in July 2005, began to generate significant controversy with the rollout in April of this year with a piece of software that contacted Microsoft servers every time a system was rebooted, even if that system was found to be authentic by the software. It alarmed some consumers who feared it was behaving in the same way as spyware.
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by george_gvann on 2006-07-20 02:56:08
se nos esta empezando a colmplicar la situacion con el maldito del bill gates con su malparida validacion de software
es perro tienen tanto billete que nos abe en que gastarlo
que un hacker de los duros haga algo, ya ni el media player 11 se puede insalar es ams alguguien que haga algo ya que el office 2003 para actualizarse por la pagina web ya esta pidiendo validacion
OGA OFFICE GEUINE ADVANTAGE VALIDATION???'
QUE HAREMOS CON EL MALDITO BILL................
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by Asimov on 2006-07-20 05:41:46
Para qué quieres es Windows Media Player? habiendo otros reproductores mejores...
Como el The Core Media Player (que hasta reproduce QuickTime y RealMedia).
¡¡¡Viva la piratería!!!! (Long live Piracy!!!)
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by george_gvann on 2006-07-20 11:06:16
no es eso es que simplemente sis e dan cuenta el gates anda ya que hasta la madre la valida antes de saludarla en su propia casa la pasara por el hp windows xp y ahorita el vista para que la pueda saludar
quiere que todo sea validado antrs de instalarse estamos jodidos asi toidos los piratas abajo gates arriba el software gratis que solo el hardware sea el que se venda
que viva la pirateria
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by Tia on 2006-07-20 14:34:29
The scenarios in the posted blog dont tell the whole truth. I happen to have a fully legal copy of WinXP pro with WGA installed...and have had three problems in the past year with not being able to get updates. Each time after spending a couple hours on Microsofts forum site, I was finally able to locate a patch file posted by Microsoft. After running the file, the updates began working properly again. Sooooo...its not only the problems listed in the blog..problems arise even if you are using everything legimately. aloha ...Tatianna :)
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by firefox_corp on 2006-07-21 01:01:52
si quieres asert tu windows xp 99% orijinal osea modo fantasma para k nada lo detecte contactame slacker_013671@hotmail.com <------ solo si quieres
if you want to maike your windows xp 99% original "gohst mode" ask me slacker_013671@hotmail.com<----- onli if you want
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by ManPaw on 2006-07-21 05:20:50
ok slacker...ya got my attention......whats the po0p?
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by trash_eraser on 2006-07-21 09:47:48
Is it fun? Stop spamming you id10t.
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by pratueang_d on 2006-07-21 18:29:21
hi
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by hmmm5 on 2006-07-29 18:42:49
Pls someone help. Guys, I don't have problem with WGA at all. The problem is that when I try to install my SP2 download from microsoft; while in the progress; it detects that my key is invalid and aborts the installation. Pls help me out. EXperts??????????????????
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by shazly14 on 2006-07-30 10:34:34
thanks very
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by shazly14 on 2006-07-30 10:39:00
thanks very
Re: Windows Genuine Advantage: When a 'False Positive'... by mihael2006 on 2006-09-21 00:04:12
ttt
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