WGA and OGA Servers Down
Posted by Bezhou Feng on 19 July 2008 - 02:58 · 17 comments & 7024 views
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Full name: Bezhou Feng
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Full name: Bezhou Feng
Forum name: Sagittarius
Contact: via forum PM
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(1 reply)
#1 Posted by strekship on 19 Jul 2008 - 03:03
- Can't they just call Microsoft and activate it over the phone?
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#1.1 Posted by +GreyWolfSC on 19 Jul 2008 - 03:18
- (strekship said @ #1)Can't they just call Microsoft and activate it over the phone?
Yes. This articleiswas innacurate. WGA and OGA have nothing to do with activating Office or Windows, only validating that the copy is legitimate. Apparently the issue was the opposite Ars made it look like: on-the-phone activation was where the problem was.Update
According to Microsoft, the issue is not related to OGA or WGA, but strictly to offline activation, which is now available again. Microsoft sent Ars the following statement in an e-mail:
On July 18th at approximately 10:15a until 1:25p Pacific, customers who were trying to activate their copies Windows XP or Office offline (which is to say over the phone or by calling in to customer support) were unable to do so due to an outage of the system that processes the product activation keys.
Microsoft is still investigating the number of customers impacted by this issue. Users who could not activate offline were told to try to activate later and were able to use their software normally. Online activation systems were unaffected, so customers activating over the web would not have noticed anything unusual. No copy of Windows XP or Office was identified as non-genuine since validation in WGA or OGA and activation are actually separate processes.
Last edited by GreyWolfSC on 19 Jul 2008 - 03:23
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#2 Posted by Stormeh on 19 Jul 2008 - 03:16
- It's actually been down for longer than that, I did 2 installs of Windows over 24 hours ago and I couldn't activate them then.
As for strekship, that's exactly what I did, took a little less than 5 mins to sort out over the phone
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#3 Posted by Airlink on 19 Jul 2008 - 03:38
- Product activation was a stupid anti=pircay mechanism anyways.
In order for your customers to be able to use the software you sell them, you HAVE TO continually support an special server farm that never can never have significant downtime.
Hey, look: Instant additional unnecessary operating overhead!
Last edited by Airlink on 19 Jul 2008 - 08:10
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#4 Posted by wd40 on 19 Jul 2008 - 04:04
- I just reinstalled and Vista I was able to activate just fine but wasn't able to activate Office 2007 until just now os maybe it's back up
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(2 replies)
#5 Posted by eilegz on 19 Jul 2008 - 04:20
- as i said before this its just an annoyance that legit users have to deal with everytime it have to install or reinstall windows and office. Pirates dont have this issue and they wont care about this neither.
Instead on focusing more resources in improving the product, they are just beating the death horse.
Please microsoft eliminate this DRM useless nonsense that only cause problems, do not combat piracy at all and only give headache to legit users. -
#5.1 Posted by cork1958 on 19 Jul 2008 - 10:20
- For as hard to understand as your statement is, whether it's from bad English on your part because of being a foreigner, which I'm not sure of, or you just being half illiterate, I agree with what you said.
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#5.2 Posted by kaiwai on 19 Jul 2008 - 10:32
- (eilegz said @ #5)as i said before this its just an annoyance that legit users have to deal with everytime it have to install or reinstall windows and office. Pirates dont have this issue and they wont care about this neither.
Instead on focusing more resources in improving the product, they are just beating the death horse.
Please microsoft eliminate this DRM useless nonsense that only cause problems, do not combat piracy at all and only give headache to legit users.
Activation and WGA aren't DRM. Stop confusing the two.
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(2 replies)
#6 Posted by HalcyonX12 on 19 Jul 2008 - 07:41
- Maybe they should host this service on the same servers that do Windows Update so they can have 100% uptime on this
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#6.1 Posted by
markjensen on 19 Jul 2008 - 11:28
- :rofl:
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#7 Posted by aristofeles on 19 Jul 2008 - 10:21
- And if you HAVE to activate to keep using "your" windows, if the 30 day grace is over, the call center will never give you the rearm option. I had a client yesterday with this problem, who has no internet, and he was told that the server was down, there was nothing they could do about it, and he had to keep calling until the service was restored (no idea when) to use his computer again.
He then brings the computer back to my store wanting to return it, where I just rearm.
At least with SP1 this will change a bit.
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(4 replies)
#8 Posted by Foub on 19 Jul 2008 - 14:14
- I have way too much self-respect to have to keep calling India to beg for permission to continue using something I paid good money for. I don't know about others, though. WGA can get deactivated for the slightest reason. Even just updating a driver can do it. It doesn't even stop piracy since it only affects legit users. Pirates have an easy way around it.
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#8.1 Posted by Stormeh on 19 Jul 2008 - 16:17
- I'm pretty sure every country has their own call centre, or at least some do, since last time I called (yesterday) they were Chinese people speaking Cantonese (native dialect for Hong Kong) and a month ago when I called in Beijing, I got native Mandarin speakers...
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#8.2 Posted by kaiwai on 19 Jul 2008 - 16:58
- (Stormeh said @ #8.1)I'm pretty sure every country has their own call centre, or at least some do, since last time I called (yesterday) they were Chinese people speaking Cantonese (native dialect for Hong Kong) and a month ago when I called in Beijing, I got native Mandarin speakers...
Nope. Recent study showed that in many cases call centre staff take on a western sounding name and accent - normally an American one.
The only company I've found so far that still has a local call centre is Apple, which actually has a call centre located in Australia for the Australia/NZ customers. -
#8.3 Posted by Magallanes on 19 Jul 2008 - 19:13
- I live in a even more remote country than NZ and yet Microsoft have local callcenter. Apple otherwise is present in my country by "authorized resellers" and this sux.
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#8.4 Posted by kaiwai on 19 Jul 2008 - 19:34
- (Magallanes said @ #8.3)I live in a even more remote country than NZ and yet Microsoft have local callcenter. Apple otherwise is present in my country by "authorized resellers" and this sux.
How about putting your country in your profile - then we'd know what you're talking about.
Microsoft doesn't have one in New Zealand - we either get an indian call centre of an american one, or an indian one where people put on american accents. What ever the case, they have great difficulty understanding NZ english.
Update: We're very sorry, but apparently our original story was inaccurate in more ways than one. A new email from Microsoft has revealed that only the offline activations were affected by the outage, which is to say, people who attempted to activate over the phone or through customer support, and that online activations remained unaffected. More updates as they come.