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Thread: WGA outage

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    Senior Member charleski's Avatar
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    WGA outage

    The MS WGA servers were down earlier today, and people who rebooted Vista were being flagged as counterfeit:
    MS forums
    boingboing

    Apparently this was fixed fairly quickly and WGA is now functional again. I'd be interested to know if anyone was affected.

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    Flat cap, Whippets, Cave. Clunk's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    Ouch, glad I'm back on XP.
    Quote Originally Posted by Blitzen View Post
    stupid betond belief.
    You owe it to yourself to click here really.

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    HEXUS.social member Agent's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    What happens when its flagged as counterfeit?
    Does the OS stop working, it fall back into the reduced functionality mode, or just warn users?
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

  4. #4
    Senior Member charleski's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    A SWAT team surrounds your house and fires tear-gas in the windows.

    Oh, wait, you lose AERO functionality.

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    Flat cap, Whippets, Cave. Clunk's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    Once it is flagged as counterfeit, they enable the search, remove the contrast bug, make the networking work, and the minimum memory requirement drops to 4GiB.
    Quote Originally Posted by Blitzen View Post
    stupid betond belief.
    You owe it to yourself to click here really.

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    Not mad just max with a long beard Mad-Max's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    Quote Originally Posted by Clunk View Post
    and the minimum memory requirement drops to 4GiB.
    You mean that it needs more then 4gb to run in desktop at least I'm on XP

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    Senior Member DrATty's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    Interesting.
    I was at a friend's private clinic on that weekend. There are a lot of PCs there, and the reception area runs Vista (the surgeries run XP because Vista isn't compatible with the software there.) There are 2 large displays that show information to patients as they wait. Both had 'this copy of Windows is stolen you cheapskate, supporter of all things not American' (something like that) in the corner. Apparently, they hadn't noticed because everything seemed to be working otherwise. The odds of this being linked to the outage are slim but it shows what can happen.
    It was a small problem really but they 'had a word' with their IT supplier and are back with XP.
    I'm one of the sad souls that works in the NHS and none of our PCs run Vista (some still run '98 - another story but basically some hardware and software won't run on XP!) I can't see this changing while Vista can decide not to work when it feels like it. I don't see WGA as the main worry with Vista but perhaps there are more dire consequences of a failed check. I don't know. I'd guess that the revocation of features would be more of a problem. Just imaging the 1000s of PCs in an organization like the NHS all throwing their toys out of the pram at the same time... and this outage shows that it could happen unintentionally.
    ... I use now a big vent for the whole machine now, but I cant use it forever, it is my grandma's ventilator...

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    Re: WGA outage

    All the more reason to stop using Microsoft products.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Senior Member Dreaming's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    Quote Originally Posted by aidanjt View Post
    All the more reason to stop using Microsoft products.
    I shall stop right now m8.

    Linux all the way. Does it run MS Office?

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    Re: WGA outage

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreaming View Post
    I shall stop right now m8.

    Linux all the way. Does it run MS Office?
    Despite that being yet another Microsoft product which one should avoid and isn't supported with Linux.... Yes. Look up CrossOver Linux.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Herr Doktor Oetker, ja!!! pollaxe's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    ^I suppose Virtualbox would let you do it too?

    I'm just getting into Ubuntu and I really like it, slight wrinkles aside. Office 2007 is possibly one of the best Office products MS have released and using OpenOffice in comparison does feel a bit dated but it still does the job fine.

    The WGA stuff is annoying, fortunately my Vista box was off from last night and this morning. As ever, people who circumvent it will probably be fine whereas the genuine O/S buyers get hit. Plain dumb, IMHO.

    edit just seen the date on this! Bah!
    Last edited by pollaxe; 26-09-2007 at 11:53 AM.

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    Senior Member charleski's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    Quote Originally Posted by pollaxe View Post
    edit just seen the date on this! Bah!
    LOL

    If anyone's interested in the reason for the outage, it's given here. I have heard stories of commercial display screens coming up with the 'not genuine' watermark in the corner of the screen, something which I would certainly find embarrassing and annoying for a system on public display.

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    Re: WGA outage

    Quote Originally Posted by charleski View Post
    LOL

    If anyone's interested in the reason for the outage, it's given here. I have heard stories of commercial display screens coming up with the 'not genuine' watermark in the corner of the screen, something which I would certainly find embarrassing and annoying for a system on public display.
    That's exactly what I saw. The systems were returned to XP. I don't know who lost out financially but this was done over a weekend for no charge. Another dis-'Genuine Advantaged' customer.
    I won't let WGA near my XP systems. My Vista disks won't see the light of day for a while, if ever. I have a Linux distribution for when MS turn XP off.
    The whole WGA system annoys me but more importantly, the outage showed what can happen. Eventually it will be removed. There'll be a massive outage that brings down millions of PCs. It must be the target for virus writers. Something will lead to millions of Vista users to needing to activate all at once or some malware will set off the 'not genuine' alarms everywhere. The potential is there. It's probably just a matter of time. It's what I'd aim for if I wrote viruses.
    I hope the open source community are working on game support. I still need XP for fun, though I still have '98 for my older games.
    ... I use now a big vent for the whole machine now, but I cant use it forever, it is my grandma's ventilator...

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    Herr Doktor Oetker, ja!!! pollaxe's Avatar
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    Re: WGA outage

    Quote Originally Posted by DrATty View Post
    I hope the open source community are working on game support.
    I think the tide is starting to turn in that direction.

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    Re: WGA outage

    Yes, of course they are, of course most games will work with Wine (Cedega and Wine are nearly the same) with a bit of extra effort. There are also a good number of games which have native linux ports that don't require any kind of emulation.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Re: WGA outage

    Might sound stupid, but does Steam work with linux?

    The only issue with it is other than the money (and using one OS for 3 years at £70 is only £23 a year, not breaking the bank), what is a compelling reason to use linux? I know what the CLI but I'd rather have it just work these days. Last time I installed linux it didn't even boot into the desktop, plonked me at the command line, and said failed to initialise x-server (I was quite excited about Mandriva 2007 when it promised game support and the 3d desktop, but the desktop never worked and my games wouldn't install - I wasn't aware how to use wine so gave up, especially since my wireless didn't work either)

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