Microsoft Genuine Advantage

Question

I purchased three Dell desktops for my church about a year and a half ago. All of a sudden one of them is popping up messages that the operating system is pirated as confirmed by Microsoft Genuine Advantage. This is kind of a pain. What do I do?

Denny Denham · Answer

sheffield8, This is a fairly common problem. Go here and see if you can validate the installation. Note that you have to allow downloading of an ActiveX component to run the validation tool.

camdids · Answer

Theres a few of us been geeting this all of a sudden. Mine started last night after installing the latest Microsoft Update. Fortunately it seems to have stopped popping up. I have no Idea as yet why it started, just that maybe another Microsoft update that doesnt fit well with some other programs. Have a look back at some other posts in the last few days and youll see your not alone. Just dont worry about how genuine your Windows is if it came on the computer.

jocase · Answer

Windows is now including Windows Genuine Advantage as a "Critical Update". So some folks are turning off auto update so they can see what is being downloaded.
But Windows is no longer showing you that it will slam you with another WGA. It now say s "you must download these first".

No telling how often WGA will recheck your computer.

tommyo1954 · Answer

I was getting bombarded too, but not for the actual W.G.A. thing.... it was my Zone Alarm popping up at every boot  asking if I would allow permission for it to run.  I finally got sick & tired of it coming up at every boot so I clicked the 'always allow' within my Zone Alarm.  I don't get any more pop-up prompts, so I guess all is well.  I have no idea if W.G.A. is lurking somewhere in my 'puter, lol..  Maybe only Microsoft knows ??:smileyvery-happy:

JRosenfeld · Answer

I have found posting problem with validation at the site below very effective. The MS people there answer promptly and helpfully. There are also tools available there to diagnose validation problems.   http://forums.microsoft.com/genuine/default.aspx?siteid=25   I had a problem with Office validation (turned out the data.dat storing Office activation info had got corrupted; from my first post to getting the fix to correct took less than an hour).

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