The 45 day from eBay would be great IF Microsoft had notified me of the problem with the software in a timely manner.
I installed the software back in early December and it' taken Microsoft more than six months to find that it's bogus.
Oh, well. Live and learn I guess
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 weeks.
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
