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MS Genuine Advantage


Procyon

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I make this post hoping someone at MS will read it. I own Dell 4600 I bought after market and use the XP Home OS that came on the install disk. At this time I'm using dial-up although I hope to upgrade to cable(3M) soon. For this reason I download updates as executables and save them to my 2nd HD and periodically to CD in case of a crash or virus. I don't mind going thru a validation process because I realize your software is a prime target for piracy. But even though my software is legal I find myself skipping the validation process because it is so aggravating and annoying and time consuming. Please improve this process so that legal users of your software do not get punished or inconvenienced. I wanted to leave this as an e-mail at MS but that proved just as cumbersome.

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if you just go through the process and validate your copy of windows.... it wont ask you do to it anymore and it will let you proceede right to the download...

and yeah.. in a few more months here you wont be able to go around it... might as well do it and get it over with

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I have an IBM ThinkPad, it came with the COA, Manual but no CD. IBM, to save money, puts an image of the hard drive in a hidden partiton. Dell uses a similar practice.

Here is the problem and I am sure Procyon has the same problem. Our serial numbers will not validate. To make matters worse, they don't match the numbers on the COA.

What IBM did in my case was setup XP with a Corporate license, ran Sysprep before shipping and when I turn on the machine, all I entered was my Name and Company. Serial number was not even asked.

So when I download these optional updates, my ThinkPad fails the Authentication process.

Microsoft is well aware of these issues and all I had to do was make a call to clear it up. So I understand your fustration. But what you need to do is call Microsoft Support and get them to manually authorize your PC.

Check your Windows\system32 folder for the wpa files

wpa.dbl

wpa.bak

These are the files that activated Windows, if these are missing, then Dell is using a Corporate key.

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They don't use a "corporate" license, they just use a key that's tied to the BIOS and is pre-activated. On any other machine, it will not work and you'll have to activate (with a different key). But on the machine it came with, it's pre-activated and does not require the end user to activate it.

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I just hope that the machine builders make it easier for the customers to validate their legit software so that they can keep getting the services that they are used to right now. Its a total lack of standards right now. I can see why MS is doign what they are doing for legal reasons however annoying it may be...but machine builders need to give the proper attention to their customers so that they dont go thru the hassle of not having valid keys and so on even though they paid money for it.

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I have an IBM ThinkPad, it came with the COA, Manual but no CD.  IBM, to save money, puts an image of the hard drive in a hidden partiton.  Dell uses a similar practice.

Here is the problem and I am sure Procyon has the same problem.  Our serial numbers will not validate.  To make matters worse, they don't match the numbers on the COA.

What IBM did in my case was setup XP with a Corporate license, ran Sysprep before shipping and when I turn on the machine, all I entered was my Name and Company.  Serial number was not even asked.

So when I download these optional updates, my ThinkPad fails the Authentication process.

Microsoft is well aware of these issues and all I had to do was make a call to clear it up.  So I understand your fustration.  But what you need to do is call Microsoft Support and get them to manually authorize your PC.

Check your Windows\system32 folder for the wpa files

wpa.dbl

wpa.bak

These are the files that activated Windows, if these are missing, then Dell is using a Corporate key.

My corporate version of XP has WPA.dbl in it, and yes I have a legal version cause my PC passes every Microsoft Verifcation test

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Computer vendors don't and won't care about those problems, they're main concern is to have high profit with low costs.

Everything else is too time consuming to pay any attention, as long as companies buy their computers everything will be ok, because the domestic end user isn't a big bucks spender, and for that reason, they will be almost ignored.

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