Pirated Vista may be useless, Microsoft says


Recommended Posts

Ms is protecting their property?! When I pay for it, it's MY property and I should be able to do whatever I want with it! If I don't want WGA installed, I should be able to remove it! The only one it hurts is the paying customers.

What is that you say, "Don't buy it if you don't want it"? Well, I don't intend to, and thrust me, I won't have WGA installed in my Vista. I will pay for it once that **** is removed.

I for one hope that Microsoft WIN the piracy battle. More people will either stick with Windows XP or learn Linux than will fork out for MS Software. As such, they'll exert a market pressure which will mean Windows XP will be around longer :)

(I intend to use XP for a long while yet btw :yes: )

Microsoft will never get their software pirate-free!

And that the code (i mean build compile n?) most people are using (or downloading probably) now isn't final, is just ridiculous...

Ms is protecting their property?! When I pay for it, it's MY property and I should be able to do whatever I want with it! If I don't want WGA installed, I should be able to remove it! The only one it hurts is the paying customers.

When you buy most software, they still are not yours. You only buy the right to use them on your computer. And by installing it you accept the licence agreement which one of says that MS have the right to install software to ensure the software is legit or other software to do with their software. Don't like it? Easy...don't install it and try a different OS.

WGA does not hurt legit customers, it hurts pirates. I am yet to see anything to do with WGA on my legit install of XP. So how is that hurting me? Pirates have to do some effort to get their stolen copy of XP to work like as if they bought it.

Ms is protecting their property?! When I pay for it, it's MY property and I should be able to do whatever I want with it! If I don't want WGA installed, I should be able to remove it! The only one it hurts is the paying customers.

Read your EULA again and then try to tell us you own their property. What you own is the media and a license. If you wanted to actually own Windows it would cost you more money then you'd ever see in your life.

Why don't you apply for a job at Microsoft?

Why don't you try to focus on the topic?

Edited by C_Guy

im sure vista will be cracked, but currently what microsoft says is accurate, the current crack will stop working whenever microsoft wants it to (i think its not until may or june) and then the pirated copies MAY stop working if the pirate hasnt updated to a new crack so that it continues to work. as far as i know there isnt a proper crack yet.

I don't know why everyone assumes activation will be cracked - it never was for XP, right? Pirates just used the VL version. That won't be so easy with Vista, especially if you want Ultimate or any edition that doesn't have a VL version.

It's so funny to see people in this board get upset at Microsoft for protecting their property and rights. Here's a newsflash: If pirates didn't rip off what doens't belong to them we would never have heard of WGA or activation or any of the anti-piracy measures beyond maybe a keycode.

If you don't like it, that's fine. But don't blame Microsoft, blame the pirates; they're responsible for it all.

First of all, nobody is blaming Microsoft for protecting their software from piracy. It's their right to do so. OK maybe some legit users are not very happy that they have to deal with WGA. They just need to stop crying about it and maybe grow up a little and maybe realize that WGA is necessary. But you need to grow up too. What you think that if we didn't have piracy, WGA would no longer be required? Get a reality check. Without WGA everybody would be a pirate because let's be honest nobody wants to pay for something they can get for free. Yes everybody and even you. You can deny it all you want I don't really care. But once people realize that they can all use the same key to install Windows, no one would even bother going to the store. People would share their windows CDs with friends and neighbors the same way they share music. Nobody would even care they are supposedly breaking a law because it would be that easy. WGA ensures that this doesn't happen. And professional piracy is only part of the problem.

I don't know why everyone assumes activation will be cracked - it never was for XP, right? Pirates just used the VL version. That won't be so easy with Vista, especially if you want Ultimate or any edition that doesn't have a VL version.

Nobody said it is going to be easy. Nobody bothered cracking XP because of VL keys. Vista will be cracked just like every software that ever existed, it's just a matter of time.

I don't know why everyone assumes activation will be cracked - it never was for XP, right? Pirates just used the VL version. That won't be so easy with Vista, especially if you want Ultimate or any edition that doesn't have a VL version.

But is that because it was there to be exploited? With the VL versions needing activation there is now a reason to find a way to crack it, and crackers do love a challenge :)

Edit: Damn, remix17 beat me to it

I don't know why everyone assumes activation will be cracked - it never was for XP, right?

It was - search with suitable keywords in suitable places and you can find multiple activation deterrent systems.

And as for the EULA - it has no worth - it is _not_ a legal binding agreement. It has less legal power than my toilet paper where I wipe my butt and no, you're not a lawyer so don't bother yapping to me how it has legal power somewhere - I don't care.

Remove crack pipe from mouth, kthx.

At work I had 20-odd boxes all with legit keys that refused to validate.

Seriously, theres are a very small number of legit keys that have failed validation, MS have admitted that, but the other 99% of keys that fail are due to them being leaked or the user not knowing that they are running pirate software. the 20-odd boxes that you have had fail are either (1) running pirate versions (2)there using keys that have been leaked or (3) your full of it like most people who say "my legit key failed validation" bla bla bla.

At work I had 20-odd boxes all with legit keys that refused to validate.

Don't lie. Legit copies activate just fine. And if for any reason you change hardware several times in a short period of time, and need to reactivate, you can call Support and they'll activate you over the phone in a couple of minutes.

I see the main issue being: Running a cracked version is a pain, I used to run a pirated XP but purchased a legal one one WGA was introduced, it became too much hassle to keep up with it, MS only need to make small changes to make the current cracks obsolete.

WGA did the job on me and made me buy a legal copy as I'm sure it did many other people. As mentioned earlier in this thread, all of the ultimate extras and downloads from the MS site will be blocked (If not already)

I don't really agree with the prices, so I have bought another copy of XP OEM with a Vista upgrade voucher for ?100, I'm set and ready to go.

Every one is looking at the retail prices and forgetting there are upgrade options and OEMs and going straight for the Pirated version

<snipped>

I wonder what other pointless and never-coming-true things you hope for....

Noone, not Microsoft, not Steve Jobs, not Bush, not Einstein, not god, NOONE/NOTHING never, can, or will ever stop piracy. End of topic.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Zed 1.7.2 has landed with updated OpenCode models, bug fixes and other improvements by David Uzondu Zed 1.7.2 recently landed on the stable release channel, bringing a host of AI-related features including automatic context compaction and settings-based skill management, along with other things like better Markdown preview rendering and custom git commands in the graph view. Starting with the AI stuff, the developers introduced "/compact", a command that basically summarizes your conversation history on demand. This tool prevents your active chat window from hitting token limits by compressing older parts of the dialogue into a brief overview. In addition to that, the team relocated skill management to the settings UI, improving how the application communicates errors regarding those skills, and updated the OpenCode model roster to support DeepSeek V4 Flash, MiniMax M3, Qwen 3.7 Plus, and Nemotron 3 Ultra Free. External agent users can also monitor context window cost metrics and delete individual sessions directly from their history. Right-clicking ref labels in the git graph now opens a context menu that runs different actions against selected targets, kind of how VS Code does it. Here are some of the bug fixes this new release brings: The active agent fails to auto-select when creating a new git worktree. A scrollbar unexpectedly appears on wrapped code blocks in the agent chat. Collapse indicators for project headers appear when performing sidebar searches. Bracketed ellipsis title prefixes fail to show the ellipsis icon properly. Project icons render incorrectly in the recent projects picker. Diff hunk controls appear inside non-editable commit view multibuffers. The software update button hangs indefinitely on the downloading stage. Restoring an agent terminal in a remote project triggers a sudden crash. Splitting a pane that contains an active commit view causes a crash. Linux Wayland freezes when trying to read the clipboard from laggy external apps. Zed is a "newish" code editor trying to break the massive stronghold VS Code has on the developer community. Funny enough, the editor was created by former GitHub employees who worked on the Atom text editor (which Microsoft killed in 2022, several years after it bought GitHub). The project officially hit version 1.0 back in April, introducing platform parity for Windows and Linux alongside deep support for DeepSeek-V4-Pro.
    • 26H2 absolutely will support ARM Windows just not on devices that came with 26H1. This is evident by the fact I am running 26H2, which on my MacBook Neo and Surface Pro 12 (inch), within a VM.
    • Mp3tag 3.35 by Razvan Serea Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs. Mp3tag supports the following audio formats: Advanced Audio Coding (aac) Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac) Monkeys Audio (ape) Mpeg Layer 3 (mp3) MPEG-4 (mp4 / m4a / m4b / iTunes compatible) Musepack (mpc) Ogg Vorbis (ogg) OptimFROG (ofr) OptimFROG DualStream (ofs) Speex (spx) Toms Audio Kompressor (tak) True Audio (tta) Windows Media Audio (wma) WavPack (wv) Mp3tag 3.35 changelog: This version introduces a new Files options page, enhanced toolbar customization, support for RF64 WAV files, improved Discogs and MusicBrainz tag sources, and many other improvements and fixes. See the Release Notes for more details. Download: Mp3tag 64-bit | 5.7 MB (Freeware) Download: Mp3tag 32-bit | 5.2 MB Link: Mp3tag Homepage | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • The FIFA World Cup is not US centric.
    • It’s amusing how Microsoft is pushing IT admins as if this was a major, game-changing update. In reality, it’s just an enablement package that bumps the build number, which is disappointing compared to the more substantial 22H2 and 24H2 releases. Technically, 25H2, 26H1, and the upcoming 26H2 are essentially the same, differing only in support schedules. They could have included the Windows K2 improvements here, but chose not to. The era of Windows being in the backburner continues, and this 26H2 release feels like an afterthought. Shame, Nadella, shame.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      AMV earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      AMV earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Collaborator
      ryansurfer98 went up a rank
      Collaborator
    • One Month Later
      Eurosoft10 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Eurosoft10 earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      523
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      172
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      78
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      72
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      71
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!