A Microsoft blogger, Alex Koc, has lashed out at pirates creating devious workarounds for Vista product activation, especially the notorious “frankenbuild” technique. He detailed how Vista will defeat such installations.

Pirate Vistas will not validate properly

The frankenbuild technique involves cobbling together code from earlier release candidate (RC) versions of Vista with code from the final version, so that the older release candidate keys can be used to activate an up-to-date version of Vista.

Koc points out that the new Windows Update Client will require that frankenbuild systems go through a validation check. Frankenbuild installations will fail because Microsoft has now blocked the realize candidate keys for systems not authorized to use them. 

“The systems will then be flagged as non-genuine and the experience will be what we announced back in October, which includes losing certain functionality (eg Aero, ReadyBoost). The system will have 30 days to activate with a good product key,” said Koc.

If the pirate doesn’t come up with a new product key within 30 days, their system will go into reduced functionality mode, which limits the use of their machine to sixty minutes with their default browser.

“I want to be clear here that even though they can only use their browser for an hour, we will never limit access to their data,” said Koc. 

“A user can always boot their PC into what is called Safe Mode.  Safe Mode is a mode of using Windows that has limited driver, display and networking support, but allows a user access to all their files.

Kock concluded: “We hope that this action will help get the message out that pirating Windows Vista will have real consequences and will, in turn, encourage people to check before they buy.” 

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Entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 6:47 am under Microsoft, Vista.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
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