windows XP suddenly not genuine

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Guest

I worked for Microsoft in a non-tech capacity until 2 years ago, and when I
left they agreed to let me to take my laptop with me as part of my package.
Suddenly today when I booted up my computer I got a message saying that I am
not running a genuine copy of Windows XP. What has happened?
 
Bill said:
Open an email tech support with the WGA folks, and see if you can find out:

http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?Gprid=9860

(And let us know--there's a lot of heat about this issue now, and the more
objective information about what's happening we can get posted, the better.)
Click to expand...

A friend asked me to look at her computer this evening, because when she
goes to the Microsoft Update site, a WGA window pops up displaying a
seven-character alphanumeric key instructing her to input that key in
step 2 and then to close that window. Well, there's no step 2, and the
only option is that close that first window which displays the key.
Thinking that perhaps her copy of Windows XP Pro had somehow been
flagged as not genuine, I ran the MGA Diagnostic Tool, which reported
the OS is genuine. Updates seem to be happening, but I find this
behavior very strange. The computer has been scanned for malware and
comes up clean.

Regards,

Margaret
 
I've seen reports like this as well. I assume that what is happening is
that the browser is being detected as having some characteristic--perhaps
activex is disabled--or it isn't IE--that require a manual step of reading
the authentication code and typing it in--but for whatever reason, the
window to type the info into doesn't show.

There is a WGA web forum:

http://forums.microsoft.com/genuine/default.aspx?siteid=25


I haven't checked the "WGA Validation Problems" section there to see if this
one is covered.

If you can download WGA-covered downloads from her machine, all is well--a
relatively small test download might be this one:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...cf-3148-40b8-a286-fe7274f6e4d8&displaylang=en



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