Vista bug forces legit users to reactivate OS
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Because of a bug in Windows Vista's antipiracy technology, some users are being told that they need to reactivate the operating system after installing new device drivers or software.
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Microsoft is pointing to a server error that caused a weekend snafu in which legitimate customers were accused of stealing software. Thousands of legit copies of Windows XP and Vista were identified by Microsoft&#39;s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation system as pirated.
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DRM restrictions may have caused Microsoft's Vista virtualization flip-flop.
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Pirates sink 'selves A week after Windows Vista's official launch hackers have devised their first attack, targeting pirates trying to install illegal copies of Microsoft's operating system.â¦
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Blog: This security update for Windows users piggybacks patches for Apple users.
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When Steve Sinchak's new Intel network card became "really slow" after upgrading his Windows Vista PC with a pre-release version of Service Pack 1, he tried uninstalling its software driver and replacing it with a new one.But to his dismay, the Chicago-area technology author and blogger found himself "stuck in a loop" during the InstallShield-managed process -- unable to replace his sluggish older driver with a new, peppier one."It's messed up to the point where I may have to use brute force to uninstall the driver, or wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista completely," he said.Sinchak's is an example, admittedly an extreme one, of the driver problems that forced Microsoft to take the unusual step of holding SP1's availability to users until March even while announcing its release to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday.Not even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already been testing Vista SP1, nor the many Windows developers accustomed to being able to download software on Microsoft's MSDN or TechNet Web sites immediately after RTM, will be able to get SP1 for another 6-8 weeks.And if you are one of the unlucky Vista users using a driver known to break and need reinstallation after the upgrade to SP1, Windows Update will quarantine you from getting SP1 until the driver is fixed."We want all of our customers to have the same good experience," said Microsoft senior product manager, David Zipkin, in an interview Monday. "That's why we're erring on the side of caution."Cancel or allow or shut up already?Service Pack 1 remains the milestone by which many companies and consumers judge when a Microsoft product is truly bug-free and mature enough to deploy. Any delay in SP1 could have an adverse effect on Vista uptake, which has been generally strong -- more than 100 million copies shipped -- despite a lukewarm market response.Zipkin points out that most drivers, once re-installed after the SP1 upgrade, should work properly.That was the experience of several Computerworld readers.Zipkin blames hardware vendors for failing to strictly follow Redmond's instructions on how drivers should be installed."The issue is that the drivers were not written per the spec we have on MSDN to ensure successful updates," he said, a spec that "has been around since the XP days."Zipkin declined to elaborate or comment on Sinchak's case. And neither Intel nor Macrovision, maker of the InstallShield software, immediately responded to requests for comment.But some experts think that the problem must be related to under-the-hood changes in Vista SP1, especially those concerning security and user privileges, which can directly affect how applications and drivers are installed."Microsoft looks like they are monkeying around with a lot of lower-level stuff," said Paul Morris, a project manager at QualityLogic, a Moorpark, Calif. software and driver testing firm. "In my mind, you've got to treat SP1 as an entirely new OS."Vista's overhauled security model had two major changes. First, local users who were formerly granted administrator access by default are granted standard access in Vista. Second, a new feature called User Account Control, or UAC, prompts users to verify whenever a new application or driver is about to be installed.Both moves help to prevent viruses and malware from taking hold. But UAC has been criticized by some users for its overzealousness, though UAC pop-ups decrease dramatically after the first month, according to Redmond.Moreover, moving users to standard rather than administrator accounts wreaked havoc on many applications and drivers that depended on full administrator access to install or run properly.If SP1 makes even small changes to Vista's security model, that could cause drivers to break again, according to Ian Lao, an analyst at In-Stat. Why? For one, most vendors took the easier, less rigorous option of patching and modifying their drivers to make them Vista compatible, rather than "rewriting them from the ground-up," said Lao. That makes them more fragile.Moreover, many drivers, unlike applications, can't be completely shut down during an installation process. The upgraded software -- in this case Vista -- may not be able to properly update the drivers, he said. Thus, permissions may be lost during the SP1 upgrade, or resources moved to different locations.Of drivers and ass-kickingsDrivers were a major bane to Vista in its early months last year.Despite Microsoft's claim that more than 1.6 million peripherals worked with Vista at its launch, there were numerous complaints from early adopters, gamers and other power users about non-working devices."It definitely wasn't just a vocal minority that had a problem with drivers at Vista's launch," said Robert McLaws, a blogger who also tested SP1 but didn't face any driver issues.Indeed, driver issues had been on the wane. At its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) conference last May, Microsoft said that 1.9 million devices supported Vista.Microsoft has not updated that number since then. But it says that over 78,000 hardware products are now supported by Windows Update, up from 34,000 at launch.And 17,000 peripherals and devices (see list, IE 6+ required) have passed one of Microsoft's two rigorous certification programs: Certified for Windows Vista, which requires successful testing by a third party such as QualityLogic, and the more self-reported Works with Windows Vista program, which is more reliant on self-reporting."A lot of OEMs did not take the Vista launch seriously," McLaws said. "So Microsoft took their problem reports to vendors and kicked some ass."In a PowerPoint presentation distributed to media last month, Microsoft was confident enough to state "Many device and software problems behind us: Nearly all Windows Vista PCs have drivers for every single device installed, available on WU [Windows Update] or from vendor websites."But Microsoft may have relaxed too soon. Morris says none of vendors that came to QualityLogic for certification of their Vista drivers have returned seeking the same service for SP1."They may be hammering on them tooth and nail internally, but they're not asking us to touch it," he said.The result? Monday's delay.Gregg Keizer contributed to this story.
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With all the talk about Microsoft's stepped up efforts to curb piracy through Vista's new activation methods, it may all be for naught after some crafty hackers figured out a way to crack the Vista Activation Server.
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Get an added level of protection by activating this backup administrator account in Vista, and safeguarding it in XP.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will start to give some customers the benefit of the doubt with an updated version of its software antipiracy tool, Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications. The company has added a new category to the tool, "indeterminate," for instances where it can't be sure whether the OS running on a user's PC is legitimate or not, said Michala Alexander, Microsoft's head of antipiracy for the U.K. Previous versions of the software labelled an OS as either valid or invalid. In the latter case it would block the customer from downloading software updates, except for critical updates such as security patches. However, some users have complained that the Notifications tool incorrectly identified their copy of Windows as unlicensed. The new category aims to address that problem, in some cases not ruling one way or the other on whether a user's software is pirated. The issue has arisen partly because, through no fault of the customer, the wrong product activation key can sometimes be used to unlock a legitimate copy of the OS. For example, a PC repair shop might reinstall an OS on a customer's machine with a product key that it uses over and over, Alexander said. She said she saw one repair shop that had a product key written up on a whiteboard so it could be reused easily. Software pirates can also complicate matters, by generating fake product activation keys to try to unlock software. The Notifications tool checks the activation key on a customer's PC and compares it to a database of legitimate keys. A computer may pass the test at one time, but six months later it may fail it if other computers have subsequently been registered using the same product key, Alexander said. The situation makes it difficult sometimes for Microsoft to make a clear call. "The last thing we need are false positives," she said. When a customer's software is flagged as "indeterminate," they will be redirected to Microsoft's Web site for more information. One way out of the problem would be to re-enter a legitimate product key, which does not require the user to reinstall the OS, Alexander said. Microsoft will continue to update Notifications every three to four months, she said. Earlier this month it released an update through Windows XP's Automatic Updates. It also rolled out 21 localized versions of the program for countries including China, Portugal, Russia, and Korea. Complaints from usersÂ have prompted Microsoft to make several changes to Notifications since it debuted in July 2005. It dropped the persistent pop-up messages that used to warn people their software might be unlicensed, for example. Notifications is one prong of Microsoft's antipiracy strategy, which also involves suing counterfeiters and visiting PC stores to ensure that sellers are installing the OS properly.
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MS downplays voice recognition attack Microsoft has played down the possibility that the speech recognition system in Windows Vista might be hijacked to delete files or perform other unauthorised actions.â¦
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Microsoft is fighting back against those attempting to distribute a cracked version of Windows Vista. It has issued an update to detect use of a tampered build which mixed files from test and final versions of the OS.
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What hope then for Vista toughness? Some, or maybe many, Microsoft volume license customers were told on Monday and Tuesday that their PCs were running pirated software.â¦
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Updates pushed out last week by Microsoft to Windows Vista users to prep PCs for next month's release of Service Pack 1 have crippled some machines, according to messages posted to the company's support site.
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Responding to reports of endlessly rebooting PCs that flooded support newsgroups last week, Microsoft said on Tuesday it had pulled an&#160;update designed to prep Windows Vista for Service Pack 1.Although the update -- actually a pair of prerequisite files that modify Vista&#39;s install components -- has been temporarily pulled from Windows Update, Microsoft has not yet produced a fix for users whose machines either won&#39;t boot or reboot constantly.&quot;Immediately after receiving reports of this error, we made the decision to temporarily suspend automatic distribution of the update to avoid further customer impact while we investigate possible causes,&quot; said Nick White, a Vista program manager, in a post to the company&#39;s blog Tuesday afternoon.White downplayed the problem. &quot;So far, we&#39;ve been able to determine that this problem only affects a small number of customers in unique circumstances. We are working to identify possible solutions and will make the update available again shortly after we address the issue.&quot;According to White, Update 937287 was the cause of the problem. In a support document, Microsoft describes that update as one for Vista&#39;s installation software, &quot;the component that handles the installation and the removal of software updates, language packs, optional Windows features and service packs.&quot; Along with a companion update pushed to users starting Feb. 12 and another that was offered to machines running Vista Ultimate and Vista Business in January, the guilty update is required before Vista can be upgraded to&#160;Service Pack 1 (SP1).Shortly after the two prerequisites hit Windows Update last week, users began reporting problems on Microsoft&#39;s support newsgroups. Most said that the update hung as the message &quot;Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 -- 0% Complete&quot; appeared on the screen. When users rebooted hoping to clear the error, their PCs went into an endless cycle of reboots. A smaller number of users said that their computers refused to boot normally.Some users have been able to regain control by booting from a Vista install DVD and selecting the &quot;Restore from a previous restore point&quot; option.What&#39;s it doing in there?It&#39;s uncertain whether Microsoft knows exactly why Update 937287 is hammering PCs. Even after White posted the company statement to the Vista blog, Darrell Gorter, a Microsoft employee, was asking users to send him system logs. &quot;I still need more log files for the investigations that we are doing,&quot; Gorter said in a message on the support newsgroup. Late last week, Gorter made a similar request on the same message board.Also unclear is the actual extent of the problem. Although White called the number &quot;small,&quot; the traffic on the Vista SP1 newsgroup is heavy. One thread had been viewed more than 35,500 times by late Tuesday.But the problem is not new. Computerworld has found messages describing the endless reboot problem dated Dec. 13, one day after it first offered a Vista SP1 release candidate to the general public. That build of SP1 also required the prerequisite updates, including 937287.Microsoft was not available for comment Tuesday night to answer questions about whether, and if so how, the snafu will impact its plans to start offering SP1 to most users next month. Currently, only beta testers, Volume Licensing customers, and subscribers to TechNet Plus and Microsoft Developer Network have been able to download legal versions of the service pack.That will change in mid-March when SP1 is set to land on Windows Update as an optional update, and again in mid-April when Microsoft said it would start installing SP1 automatically on most PCs running Vista.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.&#160;
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Software giant battles activation of unauthorized copies of its new Vista OS.
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Unpatched Windows machines are vulnerable to latest adware attack
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Now you see it, now you don't Microsoft has suspended distribution of one of the updates required for Vista service pack one (SP1), after customers complained that their PCs wouldnât boot up properly after KB937287 had been applied.â¦