One In Five Windows Installs Is Non-Genuine

snib writes "Microsoft disclosed Monday that, according to reports collected by the notorious Windows Genuine Advantage tool on millions of users' PCs, 22% of all Windows installs do not pass its validation tests and have therefore been deemed non-genuine. Quoting: 'Since WGA launched in July 2005, over 512 million users have attempted to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. Of those, the non-genuine rate was 22.3 percent... [T]he Business Software Alliance... reports that 35 percent of the world's software is pirated (22 percent in North America)...'"

Re:A la Bash.org

[Teresita]

What's the false positive rate?

Well...

[TheComputerMutt.ca]

Pff, that's obviously because geeks/pirates have so many more installations than the average person.

I'd probably count for four, but if it counts as a new installation each time you format, than more than double that. (No more now though, I've got a Mac. 3) I'd assume it's the same for many users here.

Re:A la Bash.org

[ForestGrump]

or false negative rate?

WGA only catches 99% of the XP installs...

[vistic]

My free copy of WindowsXP that I've installed on my Mac Mini is valid (msdn academic alliance), but I've intentionally avoided installing anything with WGA because I have problems with that kind of tactic.

I managed to find a crack so I could download IE7 without WGA (I never use IE, I use Mozilla products, but it's the kind of thing you install just because you figure something Microsoft is probably going to require it sooner or later). And some other WGA-only updates are available in places as WGA-less downloads. You can also use Microsoft's Orca to disable the WGA check in some .msi packages.

Maybe someone will reply and complain about how I'm not using an official super-approved install of IE7, but WGA was created to stop people from illegally using stolen software (the stuff they charge actual money for, and you didn't pay for), and IE7 is a free download. I just preferred to get around their #$*!@% WGA stuff.

Invalid... or just no CD for the license key?

[MosesJones]

My experience in reinstalling several completely fried windows boxes (virus or trojans) is that the biggest issue is that the OEM CD has been lost and then the key that they have, for a perfectly valid version of Windows, doesn't work for the "full" Windows CD that I (legally) have. So what is the solution? Phone MS Support? Hell they say its an OEM problem. Phone the OEM and they want to charge to ship a new replacement CD, or just don't care.

So I'd say that a decent proportion of those "invalid" windows installs are actually perfectly valid but just suffering because a reinstall had to be done due to the MS security issues and couldn't be done from a CD that matched the key. You can actually get MS support (nice high cost phone number) to sort this out but it really isn't worth the pain, no doubt these days they'll be pushing a "Vista upgrade" as the solution.

So WGA failure doesn't mean it isn't legal, just that the key you have doesn't match the CD that had to do the re-install.

Re:The number is high

[mandelbr0t]

Heh. I bet you didn't read your license agreement very carefully. If you received Microsoft software at your institution through the Academic Alliance, then you did not receive a full Windows XP license. Rather, you were given a license which allowed you to borrow their copy to install on your machine at home and a license key that allowed installation. However, you don't have any rights whatsoever to the software beyond what your classroom needs are. So, they can revoke your license without warning, or otherwise change the terms of what "genuine" means. At any rate, the expected lifespan of the software you received in school is exactly the length of the course you are taking that uses the software (and it wasn't even that long for me, not that I cared since I devoted myself to Linux anyway).

Disclaimer: this applies to Microsoft software obtained through the Academic Alliance program only. The actual words of the license agreement and my actual experience may disagree; however I'm going with my experience on this one, since it's similar to all other Microsoft licenses I've had to deal with.

Re:A la Bash.org

[Chapter80]

I know I tried to validate my VALID windows copy five times and failed each time. So I guess I'm one of the one-in-five. One valid copy that was unable to validate; five invalid attempts.

This is a statistic?

[Gulik]

Already (and, at the time I'm posting this, there are only around 25 comments), there are people talking about how copies of XP that they know they obtained legally fail to authenticate (so the reported piracy rate might be inflated), people pointing out, correctly, that even a modestly bright pirate will be smart enough not to try to authenticate when he knows it will fail (and so the estimated piracy rate might be too low), and people coming up with a smattering of other ways in which WGA could give false positives or negatives.

It seems safe to say that Microsoft has no frelling clue how many pirated copies of XP are out there, and that WGA is approximately useless as a tool for trying to count them. Not that it will matter at all in the media -- "One In Five Windows Installs Is Non-Genuine" is too good a headline to pass up.

Re:WGA

[oheso]

I'm a sysadmin responsible for about 200 Windows machines of varying pedigree. We have a site license for Windows XP and most of the machines have that installed and give us no trouble. When new machines come in the door they get a fresh install from the site licensed disks.

I've had trouble in the case of older machines (installed by my predecessor), and particularly with OEM installs. In the latter case, I've seen the failure rate of WGA approach 100%.

So, overall, of the 22%, I'd attribute most of it to failure. Particularly given that Windows and IE appear to use multiple different bits of code to accomplish the same thing (one of the first steps of an IE7 installation is validation). This means multiple avenues of failure, but only one chance to get it right.

No mention in the article of any attempt to account for failures.

Piracy

[iminplaya]

put 50 billion dollars into the man's pockets. What exactly is his complaint again? Piracy has also insured that Apple only gets 5 percent of the market. Why? Because it's rather difficult to bootleg the giant "Macintosh" dongle that apple attached to its software. Draw your own conclusions about the subject of piracy. For me, the numbers speak for themselves, quite loudly. Just adding to the chorus of voices in my head.

Not hardly

[davmoo]

[AOL] Me too! [/AOL]

If that's the only basis for Microsoft's estimate, they are *way* off, and I bet actually piracy isn't even half that.

I have 5 different machines running XP. 3 of them insist they are pirated...even though I have receipts and valid license certificates bought from OfficeMax for two copies, and the third copy came installed with the machine when I bought it new out of the box. When I contacted Microsoft about this, their tech's response was words to the effect of "You'll have to buy valid copies again." My response was, and I quote, "Fuck you, I'll just crack WGA on my validly purchased copies that I already own, and I dare you assholes to try and prosecute."

Re:Well...

[morleron]

One has to wonder how they count non-authorized systems. For instance, I added a gig of RAM and a different video card to my parent's computer a little over a year ago. The system told me that the Windows XP installation was no longer valid when I re-booted the system and put me through the re-certification rigamarole. That failed: it kept refusing the key that the system itself had generated. I eventually found a registry hack out on the 'Net that let me get around all of this and kept my folks PC usable. However, I'm sure that MS would consider this to be a pirated installation, even though the original Certificate of Authority is still glued on the machine. This all happened over a year ago so some of the technical details may be wrong, but the jist of the tale is correct. It all makes me glad that I don't use any MS slaveare at home.

Just my $.02,
Ron

RE: Repeat Failures

[Anonymous Coward]

I had three that failed, all of them HPs that I bought at Wal-Mart. Two of them failed multiple times, so they are now Linux-powered. The third one only fails if I download updates and try to run them instead of using Microsoft Update and automatic installation.

Re:WGA

[MEGAMAID]

Why was that modded funny?

I recently had to fix a HP laptop with a reinstall of XP they'd done only 1 month ago (from the supplied CDs and the XP key stuck to it) and yes WGA failed because it couldn't update itself with the latest version. It wouldn't login without a 5 second timer on the WGA warning and many, many popups.
It looked like spyware and other nasties were preventing some .dlls registering and this was stopping WGA from running. But the stupid thing is that because of this, XP couldn't download windows updates. Had to start again with a re-format and re-install. I can't imagine that this would be an isolated case.

Even if you own M$ it's easier to pirate it

[justfred]

Our company has Dell machines with the reg code right on the side. Since Windows gets garbaged up on a regular basis, it's necessary to reinstall. Who knows where our original discs went, but I've got Windows 2000 discs (don't dare to use XP, especially since it's of no benefit) - but they don't recognize the Dell serial number. So I log on to the net, find a pirate serial number, and the rest of the install goes fine. We freaking own these machines, and licences for them. And by the way, the cd rom drives had been updated to cdrw but the machine didn't know how to boot off those. And some brilliant engineer had the idea to reformat the machines by sticking working hard drives from other (same exact model) machines, of course that didn't work either.

Meanwhile, on my Macs, I'm continuing to be productive. No serial numbers necessary. Hard drive swap works. Any cd I plug in just works, no drivers. And no looking up install/driver/whatever procedures on arcane Linux/BSD sites either.

Re:Well...

[AusIV]

Probably true. I once moved hard drives from one machine to another and was able to boot from them, and I don't think I even had to revalidate. One machine was an AMD something or other, the other was a PIII 750. One had an nvidia graphics card, the other a Savage. One had 256 MB RAM, the other 128. Practically everything about the system changed, and if it asked me to revalidate, the number on the side of the machine worked fine.

Define Genuine

[nobodyman]

This is similar to my situation. I upgrade often but only had one working desktop at a time. Now I use the Windows "Flea Market" distro, but my pirate status isn't so clear cut. I have one computer and I've purchased one XP license.

I have to wonder how many people fall into my category. If anything, this 1-in-5 statistic is an indictment WGA and it's reliability in determining whether or not you are "Genuine".

Re:Sampling?

[TheRaven64]

I doubt many geeks have non-genuine Windows installs. My Thinkpad has a small Windows XP partition on it for playing a few old games (although WINE is rapidly making even the obsolete). It is 100% legal, however, even though I didn't pay a penny for it. It's not like Microsoft makes it hard to get a free copy of Windows if you look a bit like you might be writing code on it and strengthening their vendor lock-in...

Re:False..

[a16]

However, you do not receive installation media in case your OS installation fails which mine did after 4 months.

You might not have, but I certainly did - and I'm fairly certain most MSDN AA members should be able to. I've got a standard issue MS printed XP CD in a wallet with my own unique license in front of me, which cost me £7 in postage. I've also got an MS supplied Vista business DVD .iso and a copy burned to DVD in front of me, along with a unique Vista Business license key. Infact, I've got two - for some reason they let me order both the CD and DVD download, and have given me two license keys.

Most european establishments that I've encountered seem to give their users access to the MSDN AA e-academy site to manage licenses etc, whereas I've noticed that for some reason most US establishments go for the "lend a CD out to everyone" approach, and often with the same license key. This is where I'm presuming some of the problems might be starting - I'm not entirely sure these places should have been sharing a key for all machines, even if their license agreement with MS allows their students to install copies - they are probably still supposed to have a unique key per student. But I suppose in the pre-genuine advantage crap days, this was less of an issue.

Re:A la Bash.org

[StarvingSE]

Why did you replace XP? I've upgraded plenty and invalidated my copy of windows. It took an annoying 30 minute phone call to convince M$ that I was legit, but in the end they've always validated me. I even have the same copy running on two different machines, and i've never had a problem with them validating them over the phone. It seems that if you have any kind of semi-reasonable explanation they don't ask too many questions.

Re:Well...

[Phoobarnvaz]

Trust me, it takes far less time to just download a "third-party patch" to correct the problem, than trying to do things the "right" way.

Used to work at a computer store & a big part of my job was reinstalling Windows from viruses & such. Over 90% of the time...I had to call Microsoft to reactivate their copy of XP. Used to sit on hold at least 5 minutes & outside of US business hours...didn't even try. With that time I lost sitting on the phone waiting on Microsoft to get their stuff together meant that time I could've spent generating quite a bit of revenue waiting on their BS.

I totally agree with you about the patch...especially when Microsoft decides to end their XP activation service in 5 years or less.

Re:Most likely an undercount

[Lumpy]

Wrong.

Pirates have the WGA crack installed and it passes with flying colors downloading all apps and patches without problem.

Pirates have it way easier and better than the legit users. Hell there are even slipstreamed iso's out there with this crack installed already.

Btw: Yes some release groups can be trusted to not have it full of spyware and trojans. The bigger release groups pride themselves of releasing pristine packages...

not that I know anything about that stuff or am a member of any groups..... really.... it's true....

Re:Yes, but

[Alex_WGA MSFT]

I work on the WGA team and I wanted to take a moment to answer a couple of these questions. Btw, I think these are great questions.

1. How many installs are erroneously flagged as genuine?

> We don't have specific numbers on that but the system has been designed to give the benefit of the doubt in many cases. We are also in the process of designing a 'yellow light' scenario where instead of simply giving the benefit of the doubt we will be able to offer specific information to the user about whatever didn't seem right with the system. We can then offer tools to help them to figure out whether their copy is properly licensed and genuine and fix the cases where the system appears non-genuine when it really is genuine.

2. How many installs are erroneously flagged as not genuine?

> Not very many, there's an article now on Information Week that indicates the number is in the millions. This number was calculated by taking a previously disclosed 'half of one percent' estimate of false positives against into the total number of validations (512 million). Calculating the false positive isn't quite that easy, the rate of false positives climbs and falls when issues are discovered then fixed. Given that the false positive scenarios are time bound in this way it's not right to just use that number as a lifetime average.

3. How many installs are not seen by WGA?

> As has been pointed out in numerous places probably many of those that are aware that their copy isn't licensed or genuine won't visit one of our sites that require validation or attempt to install an application (IE7, WMP11 etc.) that have validation built into their setup. How many systems don't we see? Hard to say but it's a point worth making.

4. How many of those are genuine/not genuine?

> Again, I don't know but it's still a good question.

For more on this issue and others related to WGA visit my blog. http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/ [msdn.com]

Identical copies of virtual machine installs fail.

[OgGreeb]

I'm using Parallels Desktop on my Mac Pro with a bought XP full license, and
every once in a while the OS in the VM will require reactivation when booted.
The first time I did this I went through the online activation, the second
time it wouldn't reactivate and I had to go through the Microsoft phone operator.

Now when it happens I just restore from a copy of the VM file and keep going. The
virtual machine environment should present the same hardward configuration and system ID
to the OS, shouldn't it?

No need for Automatic Updates or WGA

[Darthmalt]

Just use Auto Patcher [autopatcher.com]

Re:Well...

[mrbcs]

You can order one and wait 3 weeks for delivery. I'm sure you customer would love waiting that long to get their computer back.

OEM's have been leaning to putting the install files on a second partition. Some actually ask you to make restore disks. I personally can't believe that they can't afford the 50 cents for the damn cd.

You also USED to be able to just use any xp cd and the key on the box and it would work. It would freak out after the first boot, but if you changed the key to what it actually was, then you could activate over the web. You can't do this anymore. Now if you do this routine, you have to call Microsoft and they usually will give you about a 60 digit code to make the machine work again.