[BC] The Empire Strikes Back--XP WGA

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Discussion on WGA, including "false positives" and the problem appearing due to sloppy maintenance (i.e., restoration with the wrong key):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/08/ms_wga_phones_home/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/12/letters_wga_row/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/28/microsoft_wga_patched/

A bit more comprehensive:

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Heres+how+to+halt+WGA+alerts/2100-7350_3-6088669.html

A tool which checks for the presence of (and tries to remove) WGA:

http://www.firewallleaktester.com/removewga.htm

This is chancy; consider it a beta which MS is apparently cat'n mousing via continued updates.

MS's manual WGA removal instructions:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;921914

This is guaranteed to only remove "pilot versions" of WGA. "Final" is being "pushed" out as a "critical update," which most users have their systems set to receive automatically.

Lotsa fun here (24 KBs on WGA problems):

http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx?query=Windows+Genuine+Advantage

Preventing this kind of SNAFU in an environment where "helpful" volunteers/college kids/interns have access to the machines is going to be problematic (and employees cannot be relied upon not to tinker, as many regard the machine they regularly use as "theirs"). Besides not allowing users to run with Admin privs, remember the standard old precautions of disabling boot-from-A and boot-from-ROM and passwording the CMOS.