Microsoft Makes WGA in Vista SP1 More of a Nag

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

I'm sure it goes without saying that Microsoft's WGA protection for Windows is nothing more than a pain in the rear, but they are working towards making it much easier to deal with along with the launch of Vista's Service Pack 1. But at the same time, they are not making it easier at all, because it becomes much more of a nag - in the "eat your vegetables or no video games" kind of way.

Prior to this updated method, WGA used to disable certain features of Vista, such as Aero and ReadyBoost. It could even so as far as disallowing you to enter the OS until you activate... meaning you would have to go through Safe Mode in order to access any of your documents. With the upcoming update, WGA will add these caveats to a non-activated install:

• Add a 15-second nag to the login
• Change the desktop background to black each hour
• Pop up regular reminders in the systray
• Optional Windows Updates are not accessible
• Force people to reinstall Windows XP

My question to most people is, why not just go ahead and activate? It sure seems to be the easiest way around things. Of course, the people this effects most are those who fiddle with different hardware all the time (motherboards, mainly). Since I use Vista only on the benchmarking machine, re-installing is not much of a problem, but for those who actually use their machines for regular purposes, it would no doubt become annoying, fast. Microsoft needs to drop WGA and be done with it.

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Personally, as someone who tinkers with the hardware settings on a regular basis, these nag screens offer a welcome relief from being forced to activate when in the middle of something (this happens to me all the time when using virtual machines). Personally, I’d rather that Microsoft abandon WGA altogether, but this is a step in the right direction.

Source: ZDNet Blogs
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