Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Update: False Positives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Coddington
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Paul Coddington

A quick heads-up to report that this recent Windows Update distributed
across Australia last night is registering false positives.

I am observing nag screens reporting that a genuine copy of Windows is
counterfeit and I am about to resolve this by reimaging my system from
the last known good backup.

PAUL CODDINGTON
http://www.pinkaxolotl.com
 
A quick heads-up to report that this recent Windows Update distributed
across Australia last night is registering false positives.

I am observing nag screens reporting that a genuine copy of Windows is
counterfeit and I am about to resolve this by reimaging my system from
the last known good backup.
Click to expand...

There have been several posts here already recommending/suggesting
people don't do anything drastic (or expensive, like purchasing)
before checking.

And each time, it still begs the question - how do you know for
certain that you are not the victim of piracy?
 
It appears that the problem is that the WGA control cannot read the
appropriate registry keys until a system administrator has logged in
once and rebooted the system. Once this occurs, the problem is
resolved.
 
"There have been several posts here already recommending/suggesting
people don't do anything drastic (or expensive, like purchasing)
before checking."

They are not all showing up in searches yet, or they are difficult to
spot because of 'noise'. Most results for these keywords being
returned by Google at this time are at least a year old and refer to a
different problem, or are the usual 'anti-Micro$oft' junk.

"And each time, it still begs the question - how do you know for
certain that you are not the victim of piracy?"

WGA has been around for a while. It is the control that was released
yesterday that is causing the problem. That, and I know where I bought
my discs from and who sent them to me.
 
The point is, that if there are problems, such as not being validated
until you have logged into Windows once as a system administrator, then
people may want to delay rolling this update out until the problem is
resolved.

For example, do you know for sure that this will not happen across a
large group of computers within an organisation?

For the average user, this update is being rolled out with automatic
updates, and to make it even more painful, it (or an update bundled in
the same download) is forcing a timed reboot on the user after it has
downloaded.

Now, if you are on the phone when that happens and you have a large
amount of work open on your desktop, where is your work today?
 
Hi Paul

I have already encountered this problem with my computer and I did get the
'counterfeit' message/icon in the systray. Everytime I restarted the
computer, I was straight back where I was and faced with the same problem, so
I reverted to a previous full system back up I created a few days earlier.

I first noticed a problem when I was clearing my TEMP folders prior to
turning off the computer. I found an unusual and unknown text file in the
Windows TEMP folder. The folder is called "WGAErrLog" and although you can
delete it, it reappears after the next reboot.

I trawled around my updates for the last couple of days and noticed a new
critical update called Windows Genuine Advantage Notification and prior to
updating my laptop, the WGAErrLog text file was was not present in the
WinTEMP folder but after updating, it was.

I know that my copies of WinXP are genuine and as I am now fed up with being
told my copies of WinXP are counterfeit, I hope that Microsoft are now aware
of this problem and are sorting a fix out PDQ.

Regards

Dave
 
Dave said:
Hi Paul

I have already encountered this problem with my computer and I did get the
'counterfeit' message/icon in the systray. Everytime I restarted the
computer, I was straight back where I was and faced with the same problem, so
I reverted to a previous full system back up I created a few days earlier.

I first noticed a problem when I was clearing my TEMP folders prior to
turning off the computer. I found an unusual and unknown text file in the
Windows TEMP folder. The folder is called "WGAErrLog" and although you can
delete it, it reappears after the next reboot.

I trawled around my updates for the last couple of days and noticed a new
critical update called Windows Genuine Advantage Notification and prior to
updating my laptop, the WGAErrLog text file was was not present in the
WinTEMP folder but after updating, it was.

I know that my copies of WinXP are genuine and as I am now fed up with being
told my copies of WinXP are counterfeit, I hope that Microsoft are now aware
of this problem and are sorting a fix out PDQ.

Regards

Dave
Click to expand...

Yeah, they are. A new and "improved" WGA coming to Windows Update next week.

Sigh.

Alias
 
I must say that I had a similar problem but I have been more lucky.

What happened is today automatic update downloaded and installed a new
version of the Genuine Advantage stuff and when before I switched off the
machine it tried to install the thing. Now 1 hour later it was still in
progress... So to get back control of the machine I had to reboot it.

Then after reboot it told me I had a non genuine windows (when I took
precautions to ensure it was and previous versions of the tool were happy).
So I when to the windows genuine site and ask for a genuine check. It seemed
to go ok. So I then rebooted the machine again and this time everything was
back to normal... That is until the next time it explodes again...

So quite clearly to me this whole story was more about genuine mess than
genuine advantage (I have really the feeling that MS is just taking more and
more control of MY machine. I have another machine using Linux and if this
continues I think I will really give up on Windows. Which would be a shame
when one consider how far it has progressed from the awful previous versions).
 
Gillou said:
I must say that I had a similar problem but I have been more lucky.

What happened is today automatic update downloaded and installed a new
version of the Genuine Advantage stuff and when before I switched off the
machine it tried to install the thing. Now 1 hour later it was still in
progress... So to get back control of the machine I had to reboot it.

Then after reboot it told me I had a non genuine windows (when I took
precautions to ensure it was and previous versions of the tool were happy).
So I when to the windows genuine site and ask for a genuine check. It seemed
to go ok. So I then rebooted the machine again and this time everything was
back to normal... That is until the next time it explodes again...

So quite clearly to me this whole story was more about genuine mess than
genuine advantage (I have really the feeling that MS is just taking more and
more control of MY machine. I have another machine using Linux and if this
continues I think I will really give up on Windows. Which would be a shame
when one consider how far it has progressed from the awful previous versions).
Click to expand...

I guess now that they have a good product they figure they should take
*advantage* of their paying customers and milk them for all they're worth.

I'm looking into Linux.

Alias
 
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