'Genuine Advantage' disables legal Windows copies
updated 04:45 pm EDT, Mon August 27, 2007
'Genuine Advantage' gaffe
Microsoft has yet to offer a reason for problems with its Genuine Advantage (WGA) service, which stopped functioning properly between Friday night and Saturday morning. Though it was fixed by later on Saturday, the glitch temporarily identified many legal copies of Windows as illegal, crippling their features. While WGA can disable relatively little in copies of Windows XP, much more can be harmed in Vista, such as the Aero interface and the DirectX API, the latter of which is crucial to many media services, such as games. The only temporary solution is to disable anything that contacts WGA, at the cost of updates and patches. Since remedying its servers, Microsoft has offered to help restore affected copies of Windows to their full functionality.
The recent outage is not the first the company has experienced; similar ones occurred in October and November of 2006, but this is the first to affect Vista, Microsoft's new flagship operating system. It was originally feared that another WGA fix might have to wait until Tuesday. [via InformationWeek]
Genuine Advantage
08/27, 05:21pm reply
In this case Genuine sounds like a true oxymoron.
Mactarian
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2007
Genuine Advantage?
08/27, 05:35pm reply
So, what, again, is the "advantage"? To ME, I mean. I routinely tell this not to install on the windows boxes in my purview.
lklarson
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Joined: Aug 2001
Irrelevant
08/27, 05:59pm reply
Is this Mac/Apple news because it's possible to install Windows on an Apple machine?
Why not cover Linux news, as well?
bryanjbusch
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Joined: Mar 2006
Isn't that nice...
08/27, 06:03pm reply
"Microsoft has offered to help restore affected copies of Windows to their full functionality."
Isn't that nice...
Deal
Mac Enthusiast
Joined: Apr 2001
re: irrelevant
08/27, 06:11pm reply
Could you stop already with the "how is this related to Apple" posts?
"MacNN publishes dozens of news stories related to Apple, iTunes, iPod, and the Mac industry, tracking the latest developments in the computer, Apple-related, Mac, online music, and iPod markets."
This seems to be computer news to me, as is the Acer-buying-Gateway story you also didn't like. If you only want stories specifically about Apple products, go to www.apple.com. Otherwise, quit complaining about a free news service.
elroth
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Joined: Jul 2006
Disadvantage
08/27, 08:03pm reply
The only thing genuine advantage can do for a legal user is cause problems, what idiot would install this c*** on their crappy PC.
ClevelandAdv
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Joined: Jul 2004
Re: disadvantage
08/27, 09:54pm reply
What idiot would install this c*** on their crappy PC?
The idiot that would like to be able to access Windows Update and pull down the much-needed patches for Windows, Office and other M$ junk.
I believe you can install the "highest priority" security patches without validating via WGA, but otherwise you are stuck with a buggy machine with "low priority" security holes.
leamanc
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Joined: Oct 2003
shameful
08/28, 04:02am reply
and they advertised windows vista as being flawless...of course it wasn't vista itself that was messed up, more like the Genuine Advantage service...good thing I'm stuck with my XP...
Sony AIT1
LinksBeMad
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Joined: Jul 2007
Big deal
08/28, 06:32am reply
How many people actually were affected? Very little would be my guess. But it doesn't stop the complaining from all the people who didn't have a problem
testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001
Why in the h***
08/28, 08:18am reply
is this Apple related news ?
Could someone at MacNN with an I.Q. higher than 12 maybe release a statement to it's readers to explain how the h*** this and other similar articles have any thing to do with the Mac ??
Of course not_ 'Cause MacNN is too good to respond to it's reader base_
UberFu
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Joined: Oct 2002