At the time of the original activation, your Key was still classed as valid.
I've been agitating for a while for a screen that comes up at activation telling you the provenance of the Key in use - but to deaf ears :(
You may be able to claim a complimentary copy of Windows by filling out a piracy report at
http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/howtotell/default.aspx
(change localisation as required)
Here's my standard spiel on the time-delays involved in tagging abused keys....
For MSDN Keys:- MS can only act once a key hits a threshold (and they won't tell an outsider what that threshold is, understandably). They then have to put it
through internal systems to ensure that all relevant parties are informed, just in case it's an oversight - then it enters the queue for the next update to the system.
I have no idea how often the WAT checking system is updated, but I would suspect that it's no more than weekly because of admin and timing issues. The internal MS processes could therefore take easily
a couple of months. It therefore depends on how close to the end of a vendors sales list you are, and how quickly he's selling them.
The cannier ones will sell just enough to stay under the threshold for each product (MSDN subs include a huge number of products), until they've maximised the profits, then try and flood the market
before disappearing into the sunset, laden with your cash.
This could take anything up to a year or more.
For products sold using a loader:- The loader gets around online activation by fooling the computer into thinking that the OS is installed
onto the correct machine, by modifying certain files.
Because of a number of factors, it's impossible to stop this, so MS came up with the WAT update - which has the ability to scan the relevant files, and detect the use of a loader tool. If the user
fully updates the machine, including recommended updates and optional updates, then the WAT update is installed and starts work, and within 3 days, a loader-installed machine will get a notification.
However, the WAT update is a voluntary one, at least at the first update run, and can be uninstalled or refused. The other time the WAT update is installed is when you validate Windows for some reason
- it is part of the validation process, rather than the activation process. This time, it does the scan immediately, and again this will show as non-genuine if a Loader is present. If a user never needs/wants to validate, then they need never install the WAT
update, and may never see a non-genuine notification.
Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi |
CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth
