SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure

Posted Jun 24, 2010 12:07 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576)
In reply to: SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure by cmccabe
Parent article: SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure

>When you get a new computer, normally you reinstall the OS and copy over your /home directory. For all but a few highly technical users, this is the norm. Windows even has a special "feature" called Windows Genuine Advantage that forces you to reinstall the OS when the hardware has changed. You *cannot* use your previous install.

I know FUD is the order of the day here at LWN, but this has gone beyond that point and I feel the need to call it:

You are a liar.

SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure

Posted Jun 25, 2010 8:26 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

I'm confused. FUD is the order of the day?

SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure

Posted Jun 27, 2010 12:12 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, to be charitable, WGA is an appalling intentionally-user-hostile mess that MS keep very much underdocumented, so it is reasonable to believe that this is what WGA does without being a liar. One could simply be mistaken.

(Certainly when WGA fires, it does make it *appear* that you have to reinstall the OS, because it demands that you pay MS a sum of money equivalent to a new OS install. But, no, they don't give you a new OS for that. You pay piles of cash and get a key back instead, which makes your OS work again -- until you have the temerity to change too much hardware at once; the scoring system used to determine which hardware is 'too much' is documented, but not by Microsoft.)

SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure

Posted Jun 28, 2010 10:03 UTC (Mon) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (1 responses)

For the record, my experience of WGA is as follows:

I've never actually *seen* WGA complain about a hardware change; the only times I've ever seen it are when reinstalling on exactly the same hardware (eg 3 times in a row because of a problem with slipstreaming drivers).

In principal though, if you change more than a few items of hardware at once (obviously this would include transplanting the disk into another machine) or whenever you reinstall then Windows will ask to be reactivated. If you reactivate too many times over a short period, it will demand that you call the phone number to use automated phone activation. At some point it will escalate to non-automated phone activation where you actually speak to a person. This is the furthest I've ever seen it go, though I believe there's a further level where you speak to the person and you have to give them a plausible reason for why you've installed the same copy of Windows two dozen times in the last week. If you then can't persuade them, this would be the point where you have to pay for a new license.

This is obnoxious and hateful, to be sure, but it is entirely unlike the behaviour described. The half-truths and outright untruths directed at Windows from some parts of the open source community make it hard to maintain credibility when describing legitimate grievances or technical problems, and this undermines us all.

SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure

Posted Jun 28, 2010 13:25 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, that's quite different from my experience (it fired once and demanded I phone a number where a licensing goon tried to extract the cost of an entire Windows license from me despite my giving them a key: 'that key is no longer valid because WGA has fired', wtf?).

I suspect that WGA's behaviour (always ill-documented) has shifted over time, and that as soon as you hit humans on phone lines you become vulnerable to the varying behaviour of those humans. I suspect all the variability can be explained away that way.

Still, give me free software any day. No irritating license enforcer and hackability both.