Now there I agree with you. Lots of companies manufacture hardware, and lots of other companies make software. When for some reason it doesn’t work in windows, we always blame microsoft every time…
I find it hilarious that the posters who by selectively installing updates piecemeal and creating bizarre software configurations are exactly the cause of creating a supposed false positive that they initially feared. The irony burns.
Do you really think someone pirating Windows wouldn’t already have known to google “remove WGA”? I mean, come on…:rolleyes:
Just a side note: you’ve already stated that your livelihood and your wealth depend on the contents of a hard drive in a computer that’s got god-knows-what programs running on it. You are right in having privacy concerns as well as protecting your own IP, so consider solutions that protect that IP (e.g., truecrypt or other encryption mechanisms). But you should also worry about wear-and-tear problems and plain old accidents.
Consider gathering up all of the information & installers for all of your software to prepare for the time when your computer dies and you have to buy a new one the next day. It could die for many reasons, some of which do not involve malfeasance by Microsoft. You should also have rotating backups, with at least one backup set kept safely off-premises. Make it a project over two weekends; it will save you from an aneurysm the day your computer dies. Me: I keep multiple bootable clones of my hard drives, as well as DVD+R archives of my documents that I make every week. And of course, I rotate the use of multiple brands of optical media, because they may have manufacturing defects. My Mac, of course, also makes automatic incremental backups every hour.
I’ve been involved in projects where a co-contractor had to admit to a customer that they couldn’t quickly reproduce a fix for a problem they’d solved a few months earlier because they didn’t have adequate configuration management. Do you know what that does when you’re maintaining flight test assets costing tens of thousands of dollars per day? Careers end over things like that, and I hope for your sake that you consider your own career just as important.
Back to privacy and paranoia:
Every application running on your computer has the ability to read everything your userid can read; I’d be much more worried about shareware & freeware having access to every document on your computer. Obviously, running any pirated software is just plain insanity. You have more to fear from malicious Firefox extensions than from Microsoft. And though “Remove WGA” probably was written by someone who wanted nothing more than to remove WGA, but think about this: you ran a program written by someone you don’t know, who had sufficient knowledge to be able to write a program to defeat an anti-tamper mechanism on a very sophisticated operating system. You learned about it from one or more people who called themselves The Piranha Brothers, who I’ll bet are not even Piranhas. You’re assuming that the author is both an incredibly capable programmer and also someone who doesn’t mind working for free to solve problems for people he’s never going to meet.
If it was a straight patch and just overwrote object code in a DLL, all Microsoft had to do was recompile their DLL to turn that app from “Remove WGA” to “Fuck Everything Up Royally.” I’ll assume it’s better than that and searches for specific patterns that accommodate every version of WGA he’s been able to defeat. In that case, the author has to release a new version every time something changes in the WGA code, and the only way he’ll find out about it is because people run his app and it screws up their computers, and he gets alerted and writes a version that looks for additional patterns in different places. During this time, the people who ran his patch (the unintentional beta testers) have corrupt code that could result in anything from “harmless” to “blue screen of death.”
And you ran this program on the same computer you keep your entire livelihood on.
Honestly, thanks for keeping me on my toes. I am a bit paranoid about data storage failure, so I have backups galore - to the point that my SO, who works in data security, thinks I am being OCD.
I also have two computers (my desktop and a laptop) so if one fails, I will have another one available immediately.
But in the abstract, these days computers really are disposable objects. They don’t last forever, and technology is advancing so fast that people are upgrading every couple or few years. The best you can do is (1) backup, backup, backup and (2) keep your machine in as good health as you can.
Maybe I made a risky move by utilizing the freeware program. But I did my homework on it, and usually if something is tainted with malware, word spreads pretty quickly - and my research produced nothing but good feedback about the tool.
There are lots of free open source tools out there that are very safe and effective; reputable tools are usually very safe.
It’s utterly insane that you trust this hackers program more than you trusted Microsoft validation program. Rationalize all you want, it makes less than zero sense.
Cite?
Ha ha ha, take that Omnisicent! Pwned!
Happy to hear about your attitude towards backups; OCD is good in this case.
Also, I’ll grant that doing a Google search and noting that there are nothing but positive posts from mainstream sites, and checking out some message boards to see what others have said about a given program is probably indicative that the program can be trusted, but just be careful. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
“Hacker?”
Cite?
Calling MS isn’t bad and doesn’t take long, after I installed a new CPU in a work computer I had to call them to get it reactivated. Grumbling and curising all the way I assure you.
I think it’s highly unsatisfactory that they expect us to keep proving our innocence over and over for something that was paid for years ago. This WGA tool was developed years after Windows came out, it wasn’t part of the original deal. And the fact that it’s passed off as something that benefits the end user is insulting as well.
:rolleyes:
He wrote code that circumvents anti-piracy measures. He created software that is of dubious legality. What’s your complaint? Or do you think that saying “Cite?” somehow constitutes an argument around here?
Remember the Sony root kit disaster? Would someone who wrote code to circumvent that anti-piracy measure be a hacker in your book? Hacker in the bad sense used by civilians, of course.
Strange, I have never experienced any problems with WGA.
I’m ‘fixing’ a computer for a work colleague. Needed a replacement power supply and tons of housekeeping, removal of malware and update of Windows.
It has just presented WGA for installation, correctly identified, not disguised as anything else.
Installation went quickly then updates continued unhindered.
Had a few positives in the past but they weren’t false positives, genuine pirate correctly identified 
Just to make sure, when I asked to cite I wasn’t entirely serious.
Yes. What’s your point? They wrote code of dubious legality. That Sony also wrote awful software does nothing to change the definition of a hacker. I’m not saying that using hacker software off the web is universally bad, just that the delusion that it’s a safer activity than installing MS updates is batshit insane.
The cases in which a major corporation wrote software that inadvertently did something destructive is infinitesimal compared to the number of times that some random, anonymous person wrote and published code or software that did something malicious or unintentionally destructive. Who has more to lose and more to gain from getting you to install software that’s dangerous to the user?
“Hacker” does not always imply malicious activity; see Wiki: “Some frown upon using hacking as a synonym for security cracking.” You are probably referring to security cracking, or gaining access to someone’s system for malicious purposes. It’s obvious to me that the author of “Remove WGA” was not trying to hijack my machine for nefarious reasons; they simply created a fix for a common annoying problem. It’s not much different from using Adblock on Firefox – Advertisers and site owners don’t like the idea of their ads being blocked, but they’re not complaining Adblock is illegal and made by hackers.
**
Omniscient**, what exact law, federal or state, is there against software like this, or like the many others that are freely available which allow users to disable obtrusive “anti-piracy” measures for non-illegal purposes? Has anyone ever been arrested or prosecuted for making something similar to “Remove WGA”? What law forbids one from altering or removing a piece of software they legally bought to better suit their needs?
This is what the whole open-source and Linux movement is about. People download Linux distributions all the time without worry that it’s coming from criminal hackers with malicious intent. All sorts of software is freely available and customizable, just look at Mozilla, WordPress, Gimp, OpenOffice, etc. I don’t see how me downloading a well-rated free utility in any way constitutes “dubious legality.”
And mods, I keep waiting for you to say this debate does not belong in GQ, so please move to GD or where ever you see fit.
But no backup of your system state before the WGA download?
The sony root kit debacle was orders of magnitude more annoying and destructive than WGA ever could be in nyctea scandiaca’s wildest fantasies.
It also did a variety of things that were illegal in some jurisdictions resulting in lawsuits from various state attorney generals offices.
The point is, in the fight against software and media piracy the companies sometimes choose drastic measures that limit functionality. I mentioned before the disgustingly annoying “you would not download a car” message on DVDs. Legal software that can be used to rip is under fire. (Meanwhile, gunwielding freaks defend their “rights” with the slogan “guns don’t kill, people do”.)
The OP was someone who got caught in this stupid crossfire. With his PC crippled, can you really blame him for removing WGA? If he were involved with pirating windows he would not have asked. Perhaps the topic can be closed, because the big issue may not be resolved but the immediate problem is.