…

Yes indeed….

Now, if he used the laptop as supplied, with WGA running - absolutely no problem. The problem came when he plugged in a USB WiFi adapter to access the corporate network. Suddenly WGA started screaming that the copy of XP on the laptop was illegitimate, and that he needed to buy a new license. We called Microsoft, they could see no reason why the license code wouldn’t work. In the end they gave us another code - that didn’t work either.

Now, this was XP and I was able to remove the WGA so that he could continue to use the machine. He can even get live updates, by plugging the machine’s onboard CAT5 port into the corporate network. But to this day, it will NOT accept that the laptop plus the WiFi USB stick is legitimate.

Reduced Functionality Mode in Vista would have rendered his PC unusable even though the OS was legitimate, the hardware was legitimate and the setup was nothing out of the usual. Microsoft’s eventual response was to advise us to buy a different manufacturers USB WiFi adapter, even though the one we’d bought was on the approved list. They had no comment as to why we needed to spend even more money to correct a problem that should not exist.

People are also catching on to the inherent difficulty in viruses that don’t trigger security alerts by attacking the main components of the OS, but instead trigger the higher priority anti-piracy checks by attacking the authentication system. I predict within a few months Microsoft will be losing a battle against virus writers who will turn RFM against them and against their customers.

Microsoft are going to have to change things around VERY quickly if they are going to survive this. Massive lawsuits and media tales about crashed Vista systems entrusted to do vital jobs could see the company go down in flames.