Are you using a pirated copy of Windows XP?

This week Microsoft are releasing a new update to the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) component of their Windows XP operating system. If your Windows license key is copied or stolen or you have made an attempt to bypass the Windows online activation process then now you’re going to get nagged.

Nagged?

If your copy of Windows is not genuine (or your key has been stolen and published on the Internet), the new WGA component will start to nag you.

1. Your desktop background will be changed to a plain black background. You can change it back manually, but every 60 minutes the background will default itself to being plain black.
2. You’ll get pop-up notifications telling you that, “You may be a victim of software counterfeiting”.
3. The same notification will be permanently displayed on your desktop background, just above the system tray.

“What if I bypass product activation again? Surely the crackers will come up with something?”

It’s true that ultimately someone with the right skills, time and determination will break the current WGA protection for Windows XP. Microsoft have identified Windows XP Professional is product most likely to be pirated. Software protection and cracking is an arms race where one side makes improvements to the product’s defences and the other seeks to exploit undetected holes or to crack (replace files) the product’s protection in order to bypass the defences. Each “side” has it’s turn at either attacking or repairing the defences of a software product.

In order to reduce software piracy, Microsoft are adopting a common Micro-ISV strategy in coping with this software protection arms race; to reduce the turnaround time in changing the defences. As soon as a new crack is detected or a new product key is leaked, Microsoft will release a new update to their WGA protection in order to stay “one step ahead”. The pirates work will be wasted and they’ll have to start cracking the updated product all over again.

“So what? I’m a pirate and I can live with that”.

It’s clear that this new WGA update won’t put off those who either cannot or will not afford to pay for a genuine Windows XP license. However it will serve to embarrass and inconvenience businesses who have not paid for their copy of Windows XP. This goes for a lot of the “second hand” market too; where pirated Windows licenses abound.

I’m sure the hacking community will break through the protection offered by WGA but it will be a smaller subset of the community that will keep up to date with pirated updates than before.

We also don’t know Microsoft’s plans for the future. Sure at the moment they are just nagging, but it is very possible that they will disable some or all of the operating system for those who get caught.

“I reinstalled Windows using the key on a sticker on the bottom/side of my machine. Windows won’t activate!”

This happens a lot. When you purchase your computer from an OEM (e.g. Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba) they often use one license key for all of their installations. It’s easier for them that way since they have thousands of machines to get ready for customers. The key is pre-activated and is different to the unique key that they give to you. That key on your sticker is more often than not invalid for the purposes of activating a new Windows installation. The sticker is provided for legal reasons only. If you’re unable to activate using the key provided by your OEM, you need to use the recovery media (usually a recovery DVD) in order to rebuild your machine and ignore the misleading sticker!

“I bought my machine from a genuine shop!”

This happens a lot. A small business might accidentally have built you a machine using an image (a copy) of another machine’s operating system, including copying the key. Windows detects that the machine is different and activates the WGA nagging. Unfortunately you need to prove to Microsoft that your license is genuine or go back to the shop and for a refund.

“What about Windows Vista?”

Windows Vista already has the WGA technology built-in. This update is merely a retro-fit to Windows XP Pro, the most copied operating system in history.

Does this new WGA update affect you? Has this article helped you? It took about 30 minutes to research and 30 minutes to type, so please leave a comment and let me know if it’s been useful to someone!

Debunking a common misconception on software licensing…

By law you must maintain copies of all your software licenses. Software is intellectual property and is very rarely owned by the end user. Instead software is licensed from the vendor to the end user. You don’t purchase software to unlock it, instead you purchase a software license to give you the legal right to use the software within the terms of the license. In practice almost all software vendors implement a form of software/anti-piracy protection to keep the shop safe!

If you haven’t got a copy of the software license for each piece of software you use, contact the original vendors.

If you are in the UK and are aware of unlicensed software use by a business, then please contact: http://www.fast.org.uk/

Even software developers have to eat and pay our bills!

Source:

http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2008/08/26/update-to-wga-notifications-for-windows-xp-professional.aspx

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5 SP1 released

Yesterday Microsoft released the first service pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and also a service pack for the .NET framework version 3.5. There are some much needed improvements to both the development tools and the runtime but there are still some big issues with the .NET framework (like the 231 MB download) that will put a lot of users off getting up to date.

For those new to the idea of the .NET Framework; the .NET Framework is a software technology that is present on many Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is basically a library of code and a platform on which software developers can run their software. The .NET Framework is key to Microsoft’s strategy for software developers to create software for Microsoft Windows. The .NET Framework has had five major releases, 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. Each version can run software that was written for any of the previous versions. The .NET Framework version 3.0 is included with Windows Vista and Server 2008. There is also a smaller “compact” version of the framework for Windows Mobile devices.

What I like

For end-users…

Microsoft have just released an update to the 3.5 version and for the first time are calling the update, “SP1″ rather than giving it a new version number. The new version can improve the loading time and performance of .NET applications by 20-35%, and as such I highly recommend our customers install the latest version of the .NET framework on their machines.

This service pack will also improve the hardware acceleration of your .NET applications that support using Microsoft’s “WPF” technology. We don’t yet, but we are looking into incorporating this technology in our future desktop software releases.

For developers…

It will also come with a set of new WPF controls such as a WPF-enabled DataGrid; I’m looking forward to investigating that. Also ASP.NET gets an MVC Framework and RESTful API; if you’ve used Java EE or PHP or Ruby you’ll notice the improvements.

The downside

Most of our users are still running the .NET Framework version 2.0 (released in November 2005) and we still get a lot of users who try to run our software on machines without any .NET Framework version at all. For some reason Microsoft do not seem to care about pushing the framework updates out to their users. Often the .NET Framework will appear to a user as an “optional” Windows Update (if it appears at all).

To get around this issue, I have been testing various .NET linkers. These are tools which take your software, identify the connecting calls between your application and the framework and then strip the components out of the .NET framework and “link” the two together. I’m also able to slipstream the full .NET Framework installer into our software so that the framework will be added to a user’s machine in the case that they don’t already have it. The problem here is that the full installer for the .NET Framework 2.0 is 23 MB. Microsoft should not expect independent software vendors to be distributing their operating system updates in this way, but it is understandable that a lot of our customers and computer users in general will be confused by the need for the “.NET Framework”. The .NET Framework 3.5 is 231 MB. That’s a lot of overhead to add to your installer when your own application might only be 1-10 MB.

My suggestion to independent software developers

The .NET Framework 2.0 has finally reached a point where most users have it. There are a few who don’t, however and your software installers need to either bootstrap .NET 2.0 (23 MB) or point the user at downloading and installing it. If you’re feeling clever, you may even wish to try downloading the framework components as part of your installation process or using a “linker” to cut out .NET framework dependency altogether.

Unless your needs strongly dictate you need to use WCF, WPF, Cardspace, Workflow, or Linq, don’t use the .NET Framework 3.0 or 3.5 yet. Update Visual Studio 2008 to SP1, but use 2008’s new “Target” feature to target the .NET Framework 2.0.

Alternatively to be sure all your users will have the .NET 3.5 pre-requisite for your software, wait for Vista SP2 and then label your software as “Vista only”

My suggestion to corporate “developers! developers! developers!” software developers

Go ahead and download and install the .NET Framework 3.5. Visit your users around the office and ensure that they have the latest .NET 3.5 service pack 1 applied. If your organisation has already migrated to SQL Server 2008, platforms running that database server will already have .NET 3.5 SP1.

My suggestion to ASP.NET web software developers

You probably already have the .NET Framework 3.5. If you don’t, you’re missing out on all the latest AJAX-enabled web goodness. Assuming you have 3.5 already, get the service pack today. Lots of performance improvements and bug fixes as well as Microsoft’s new RESTful style API, which has finally made it into ASP.NET and levels the playing field with Ruby on Rails a little.

Further resources:

• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
• Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en
• Read the release notes: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945140
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
• Download & release notes: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ab99342f-5d1a-413d-8319-81da479ab0d7&DisplayLang=en (2.8 MB bootstrapper)
• Download full redistributable package: .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Full Package) (231 MB)

I hope this helps. Are you a software developer? Please leave a comment.

Mike on Software on iPhone

Although I’ll reserve my judgement on the iPhone until a later article, I have to say that this screenshot sent in from a reader shows how great this blog looks on the iPhone:

This clever web page rendering is thanks to the Wordpress plugin, "wp-pda" which you can obtain here: http://imthi.com/wp-pda; it’s a brilliant little piece of code.

If you’re using Windows Mobile’s Pocket Internet Explorer you’ll get a similar layout with post previews. It looks a little like opening an RSS feed in Internet Explorer on the desktop. Of course if you’re using the latest Mobile Opera beta, this website will look just like the desktop. The iPhone doesn’t render the full "desktop" site as the plugin detects the browser identification "agent" and delivers a cut-down site especially formatted for the iPhone.

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