Another wave of WGA failures
Summary: Will Microsoft ever get WGA right? Last week, I reported on a mysterious outbreak of failures that were causing legitimate Windows XP users to fail validation and be tagged as pirates. This week, Microsoft's support forum is awash in reports from corporate and academic customers that volume license keys (VLKs) are suddenly being reported as blocked.
Will Microsoft ever get WGA right? Last week, I reported on a mysterious outbreak of failures that were causing legitimate Windows XP users to fail validation and be tagged as pirates. In all, 42% of the problem reports I looked at were from customers running confirmed genuine copies of Windows XP.
This week, the WGA Validation Problems forum is awash in reports from customers in corporations and at universities that volume license keys (VLKs) are suddenly being reported as blocked.
Reports include:
- a campus computer lab whose machines are failing validation
- another university campus
- a corporation whose old VLK was deactivated and replaced with a new VLK that appears to have been blocked without notice
- four supposedly valid corporate VLKs being blocked at one company with more than 1000 users.
Microsoft says the problem is under investigation:
On Monday and Tuesday of this week (Oct 2-3), some VLK customers may have experienced problems with WGA validation. If a Windows XP system with a VLK recently began failing validation or reporting as non-genuine, then they may experiencing this problem. The problem was the result of an issue on the Microsoft server side, and we are still investigating the cause. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you, and I am personally working to get the information you need to resolve this issue.
It's particularly embarrassing timing, given this morning's rollout of a renamed and much tougher activation and validation platform for Windows Vista that will increase the burden on corporate customers using VLKs.
I've asked Microsoft to comment, and I'll pass along any response I receive.
Update 4-Oct 3:00PM Pacific: Microsoft provides the following statement:
Earlier this week one of Microsoft's servers experienced a bug that resulted in an outage of the validation service. As a result, some Windows XP systems incorrectly failed validation and were reported as being non-genuine. The situation was identified and fixed within 24 hours.
Steps are now available on our support forum for customers to correct any problems they are experiencing with this issue. We recognize the inconvenience for our customers and are working to address their specific concerns.
"We recognize the inconvenience..." Is it really that hard to say "We apologize"?
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Talkback
The problem was the result of an issue on the Microsoft server side
So to offer a "fair and balanced" report, await the findings of the investgation before jumping to speculative conclusions.
But it is fair
I personally had to take over 2 hours of my time yesterday to service a legit computer lab and half of our teacher laptops because of Microsofts error. Is MS going to pay my labor in fixing their mess at my site because of their server problem? Of course not. When a company is doing something that is not working and it's affects so many people, and costs end users labor then they need to get rid of it or test it until it works correctly on servers that are not affecting the end user. They should have a redundant server to fall back on when one fails, or don't they believe in good computing practices?
So what exactly did you do for those 2 hours?
Made it go away
I used the time to write the script to run the free Remove WGA over the domain. Had to send the email that I knew about the problem since I was bombarded with emails about this error and let them know that they should reboot after 3:30pm when classes were out. Physically had to follow up with each teacher to make sure that they had rebooted. Had to physically go to the labs to reboot each computer since we had classes running through the labs and it causes a distraction to the class with each child saying hey what's this popup.
Doing that along with the walking time across campus took 2 hours.
Self-contradiction, part II
Quite right -- which leads to the question of how you can possibly believe:
[i]When a company is doing something that is not working and it's affects so many people, and costs end users labor then they need to get rid of it or test it until it works correctly on servers that are not affecting the end user.[/i]
As you pointed out, this isn't going to cost Microsoft anything. In which case, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Microsoft Won't Admit Liability or Fix Its Problems
So either accept the situation or choose to take your business elsewhere.
Microsoft will not fix problem
errors and report them instead of having his staff find errors and fix before offering products for sale. I quit long ago participating in beta testing.
Wes
I thought problem reports had dropped?
It doesn't matter that the problem was on Microsoft's servers. Potentially thousands of customers are being told, inaccurately, that their software is non-genuine and their license is invalid.
There is no amount of spinning that can make this a good thing.
Nor will any amount of spinning make it worse.
To be accurate it is potentially millions but in reality only four sites were reported. This "the sky is falling routine" is really getting tedious!
No, I only provided links to four sites
Of Course Problem Reports Were Dropping
Please Keep Up The Reporting, Ed
When will you understand?
Does MS efver consider failure cases when they are testing? I mean, come on, what kind of coding genius does it take to have WGA take a few retries on it's own BEFORE causing the customer grief.
If WGA fails validation due to a server problem (suspect reasoning, but at all costs, NEVER EVER admit there could be a flaw in WGA), let's say the server is unavailable, so WGA can't phone home and do it's job. How about a background mode. It tries again in 24 hours, and again 24 hours after that. This way, TRANSIENT WGA failures are NOT customer affecting.
This is just one in a hundred ways WGA could be made less obtrusive and fairer to the customers, but that is not MSs goal. Extra revenue is.
I just can't believe that there are no atoorneys out there who can't find a way or loophole that allows for false positive WGA failures to get into court. Or that no one has gone to small claims court because they have been flagged guilty until proven innocent.
TripleII
See your masters have you
RE: Another wave of WGA failures
Will Microsoft ever get WGA right?
After all, it's not causing Microsoft any problems at all.
And from my perspective....
:-)
Re: And from my perspective....
Hey, Great!
So hang everyone else, right?
Not causing MS any problems?
But when corporate sites with thousands of seats start experiencing this, then Microsoft has a problem.