Subscriber Richard Austin wrote me this week about an experience a colleague had.
One of my co-workers was messing around with his son’s computer. He installed one of the “Corporate keys” on a copy of Windows XP Pro.When he finished, he went on line to get the updates. The Windows Genuine Advantage got downloaded and installed on his system.
It immediately informed him that his system was hot then proceeded to lock his system to a private IP address which effectively locked him off the internet.
He went into the system to change the IP address which appeared to work until he tried to go on the internet at which time, the system reverted to the private address.
Looks like Micro$oft is getting aggressive. The only way around this was to reinstall Windows
Great Newsletter
Richard Austin
Thanks for the story, Richard. It’s nice to see that all the inconveniences that legitimate users have to put up with are actually working to block piracy of Windows copies.
I think that’s an interesting effect. Since Windows XP looks for the key during the install process, he managed to spend all the time necessary to do the install.
Then, he went online to get his updates — and that’s when his system was disabled.
The good news (for him) would be that he didn’t waste any time installing additional programs.
Hopefully this story will help another reader avoid such a problem.
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