It's too bad that none of your posts include the Diagnostic Report that would illuminate this discussion with some facts about the exact situation.
It sounds a lot like you are describing a typical encounter with Product Activation rather that with WGA. PA monitors the installation of XP on the computer and raises the red flag if certain conditions indicate that the installation may have moved to a different computer. However, with a (presumably) full retail license, you are allowed to move the installation from one computer to the next, as long as it is not activated on more than one computer at a time. Your call to an Activation Center should have been concluded in less than 5 minutes.
If for some unknown reason the Activation Center refused to accommodate the change, then that would qualify as being "burned" because your copy of XP would have been rendered useless. If the center allowed the change as they should have done, that is just the way it works and I fail to see how you could claim you were "burned." PA has been in XP since day one and was well-publicized at XP's debut, so if you did not want to deal with PA, you should not have purchased XP.
Both the Validation part of WGA and the Notifications part of WGA have EULAs that you had to agree to for them to be installed on your computer, so let's just drop the accusations of "sneaking" unless you want to embarass yourself by admitting you are not responsible for your actions.
You did not have to install either of the two. If you chose not to, your computer would have continued to operate normally. Your computer would have continued to receive critical security updates thru the Automatic Updates mechanism. Choosing not to install would have disqualified you from receiving the "perk" nice-to-have downloads from MS downloads and would have disqualified you from participating in the "perk" of manually updating your computer at Windows Updates. A loss of convenience features, Yes, but certainly not the end of the world, and not even a breach of the EULA.
Antivirus software? Safe computing practices? Firewall? Again, you are risking embarassment by admitting that you are not taking reasonable precautions.
Again, you seem to be assuming that someone else is responsible for keeping your computer safe, secure, and operating properly. For more than 2-1/2 years, MS has been saying that these are the first three steps to protecting your PC: firewall, updates, and antivirus software. http://protect.microsoft.com/security/protect/WSA/en/default.asp
Oh, I see. You are equating the installation of WGA (not sure if you mean the WGA validation tool or the notification tool, or both) with the infestation of your computer by viruses and malware. I think I understand why, because in both cases a serious lack of attention on your part was the proximate cause of the installation of something you did not want on your computer. And such installation and the consequences thereof were the "burning" that took place.
hard drive problems
