Violated and Humiliated by WGA
So, because Dell had the brilliant idea of hiding the fans in the dark depths of an m1710 laptop, beneath keyboard and palmrest, beyond wireless cards, optical drives and displays, I had to disassemble the entire machine to remove approximately a fingernail of dust. I did so, as I’ve done a couple of times before, when the machine grinds to a halt while wheezing for air at any sign of work. The only trouble was, when I started the machine I was treated with a message telling me “You windows activation has expired!”.
“Odd”, I say to myself, this copy is supposed to be legal, I got it from MSDNAA and not piratebay and everything! So, I attempt to activate it online, unsuccessfully. “It’s the clock that is set wrong, of COURSE”, reboot to bios, set clock, nope wasn’t it. Then I call the automated system that diligently tells me the copy is valid and gives me a very long confirmation code, “Success!” I think to myself. Not so, the confirmation code does not match the installation ID, “But! The mechanized man in the phone told me?!?”.
Call again, input confirmation code again, no luck, call a third time, get a human that is just as baffled as myself. “Call tech support in the morning!”, he exclaims exacerbated after 15mins of not knowing what the hell is going on. In that instant I vaguely remember something that may cause me to look and feel like a complete dork:
Wasn’t there something about this Vista SP1 Beta that could be involved. (Reminding the reader that there was NO indication, that it was involved in any way!) Being confined to my Firefox browser at the mercy of the evil WGA security caused by failure to activate windows, I was banished to the Safe Mode to perform an uninstall of said service pack.
Upon completion, vista was more forgiving. (A desktop and everything!) It did however insist that my windows was a pirated copy and was not going to go quietly into the night with that information. In an attempt to temper the beast, I went to Genuine Advantage, first using my default browser with no luck and then finally Internet Explorer reported all was well in the land of Vista activation.
Moral of the story? I do not know, maybe to avoid install beta software from Microsoft if possible (Even if your network shares are painfully slow!) and try to remember to tell you user what is wrong when making software that locks them from their systems, before they call and harass all available support 