Windows Genuine Advantage warnings for non local admins, works fine for admins

[DukeN]

Guys

I'm having a really weird issue - bought a bunch of HP DX2000MT
business desktops (preloaded with XP Pro SP2 with licenses stickered on
em).

To save time, I made an image, ran sysprep and then extracted the
sysprep'd image to two other machines.

Upon the start of the mini setup on all machines, I keyed in the key
listed and it worked fine when I logged in (I'm a domain admin).

The problem however is that when non local-admins log in, they get that
star in the taskbar saying Windows is counterfeit, when it clearly is
not.

Whats really, really bizarre is that if I log that user off and log on
myself, that warning goes away. I can even goto microsoft.com/genuine
and do the validation search successfully!

There was an error message saying that the CD key couldn't be read when
the local non-admin user was logged in - is there a way to fix this?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Don't have an answer for you, but it's something I've been thinking about
lately - supposing a whole suite of computers suddenly sprout non-genuine
nags - even though they are genuine - and the network-installer loses his
client, or maybe gets wrongfully reported to FAST as a result?

I somehow don't see me as a small guy being successful in a damages-suit
against MS for wrongful accusation, so I'd rather that didn't happen in the
first place!

Yet, as long as this is being foisted onto computers there are *bound* to be
false-alarms, that's in the nature of the thing.

IMHO this overwhelmingly vindicates my decision to turn off the autoupdate
service and do any updating manually, a decision which I made some time back,
mainly for concerns over updates breaking specialist software.

Perhaps MS ought to think more carefully about the implications of this for
machines installed by contractors - Or by PC World for that matter - You
can't just go round (publicly) accusing people of crimes, whether you do so
verbally or robotically makes no odds. You have to be able to prove your
accusation, and the onus of proof is on the accuser, not the accused.

 

[Joseph]

Well said!

 

[Guest]

I had this problem on my networked PCs after a recent update.

The solution was to make sure Everyone has Modify rights to the following
folder:

c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Windows Genuine Advantage

I put this into a policy and it got rid of all the errors.

This came to light in the same way as yours - the message doesnt appear when
an admin user logs in, but when a non-admin user has logged in!

 

[Guest]

Sorry,

That path should be:

c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Windows Genuine Advantage