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Driver Update Can Cause Vista Deactivation
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Oct 23, 2007 09:18 AM
from the thank-god-we're-all-safe-from-pirates dept.
from the thank-god-we're-all-safe-from-pirates dept.
KrispySausage writes "After weeks of grueling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA — something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.
Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour."
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Fool me once..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fool me once..... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Informative)
Programs that were at one time affected: Adobe Reader Install Blackberry Sync LogMeIn.com Client Cisco VPN Client
Those are just the ones I come in contact in my job. I work for a Mortgage company and I can tell you that we may never use Vista. Hopefully we can hold on to XP long enough for Microsoft to pull it's head out of its ass.
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Informative)
While technically "Documents and Settings" doesn't exist anymore (user profiles are in C:\Users, which is amazingly easy type given typical MS paths), they put a (hidden) link at C:\Documents and Settings that points to C:\Users so that programs of this nature won't break. Whether they should have done that or not is another topic.
In response to the GP, basically anything that is security related could potentially need to be rewritten. A lot of this stems from the fact that, by default in XP all users were Admins (yes, not secure...but that is how it is/was). In Vista, even if you are an Admin you don't have full admin rights without jumping through hoops.
For example, the application that I work on sometimes needs to spawn a child process that requires full admin privileges (the app itself can run as a normal user). In previous versions, we were calling CreateProcess() to start it, and redirecting standard output to retrieve the results of the child process. However, for whatever reason, you can't use CreateProcess() to start a child process with higher rights than the original process - that doesn't trigger the consent (Allow or Deny) dialog. You need to use ShellExecute() for this, which (helpfully) doesn't allow you to redirect standard output.
This is just one example of the many small, annoying "features" we had to work around in order to correctly work on Vista.
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm also a developer who has had to port apps from XP to Vista, and trust me, the GP is right, it's a nightmare. Most of the problems stem from the "improved" security. Vista locks down certain parts of the system pretty hard (e.g. the registry), in theory to block malware, but they wound up taking out (I'm guessing) about 75% of commercial apps along with it. Just for example, under XP, most application operations that require elevated privileges (e.g. writing to Program Files) will simply work if the application is being run by an admin. Under Vista, the OS will block the operation until the admin approves it, even though the admin is already running the app. That might be OK if it were handled transparently, but the application has to be rewritten to handle this case explicitly.
Any substantial commercial XP application that has been around for any significant amount of time will almost certainly run into problems under Vista. Perhaps in theory a 100% perfectly well behaved Windows application that doesn't do one thing even slightly wrong anywhere might have a chance of working immediately under Vista, but how many real world applications are 100% perfect?
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Re:Acrobat (Score:5, Informative)
Are you asking for bug fixes in a Linux kernel from 6 years ago? Nope, And Linus wouldn't give release them anyway. But I don't hear anyone yelling at about that.....
Linus won't what?
The latest 2.4 version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.35.3
The latest prepatch for the 2.4 Linux kernel tree is: 2.4.36-pre1
The latest 2.2 version of the Linux kernel is: 2.2.26
The latest prepatch for the 2.2 Linux kernel tree is: 2.2.27-rc2
Ok so linux 2.2 and 2.4 are still being actively maintained.. how old are those?
Jan 28 1999 linux-2.2.1.tar.gz
Jan 30 2001 linux-2.4.1.tar.gz
So your wrong.. you can get Linux kernel patches from 5 year old versions and older.
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the user doesn't have a choice, it's usually because they're using it in a corporate environment, meaning that someone else is the person actually dealing with issues like these, not the user.
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the "fooled me once" time? I don't think it's twice yet.
XP activation issues?
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Re:Fool me once..... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:deactivated? so? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've already experienced this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've already experienced this... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I've already experienced this... (Score:5, Funny)
The advantage of doing this in a virtual environment is that "pkill -9 vmware" in a blind rage is a lot cheaper than throwing your computer out the window.
("Windows, meet window!")
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Re:I've already experienced this... (Score:5, Interesting)
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To all potentials looking to Vista as a solution.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Pirated version? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pirated version? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I paid for XP, and I got XP. I'm happy.
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Re:Pirated version? (Score:5, Informative)
"They" really like it if you make that mistake, but there is a big difference between the two.
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Re:Pirated version? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Pirated version? (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like I'm being accused of criminal activity from the first second I install a MS product now.
Likewise. This is why I refuse to install Vista on any new PC I'm putting together, or to accept the "upgrades" to things like Media Player that make them worse. I don't even have to jump to an alternative platform such as Linux or Mac, nor do I need to break the law and pirate something: I just buy XP instead. As long as people keep doing this, retailers will get the message and keep supplying it. When enough big retailers are losing out on profits because of Vista [bbc.co.uk], they will make their feelings clear enough to Microsoft, and either the problem will go away or the Microsoft executives responsible will start going away.
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Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Funny)
Prostitutes specialising in S&M?
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A similar experience is what drove me away from (Score:5, Interesting)
This problem is hardly unique to Vista, and is just going to drive more and more people away from Microsoft. Microsoft still acts like they are the only game in town. They just refuse to accept that the competition has improved significantly from the time XP was released....
Windows Zenith (Score:5, Funny)
Steve Jobs... (Score:5, Funny)
Makes OS X and Linux look all the better (Score:5, Insightful)
Main differences being vs Linux/Apple is that Apple is a hardware company and could care less if a small fraction of their user base pirates an operating system as long as they are buying hardware and are spreading the good word, and linux makers... want either support contracts or nothing.
And (Score:5, Insightful)
No, seriously folks, at some point these stories about Vista have to lead to a stampede away from the product. Just watch for the signs....like the one above.
Notice? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know about anyone else, but if my OS stopped working after three days I'd definitely notice.
Re:Notice? (Score:5, Funny)
That's because, most likely, your OS is not a Microsoft one.
In all thruthyness there's not much difference between a working Windows install, and a non-working one. In both cases, both user and the computer are un-productive, but in the case of a non-working install only more so.
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Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Cost of Vista's copy protection (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html [auckland.ac.nz]
It's all about the DRM.
Well they made their beds, so now ... (Score:5, Insightful)
When MSFT was touting the The Total Cost of Ownership studies, did anyone ask, if the costs included reacting to unwanted updates? How many times people have spoken about vendor lock and the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket? Trashed everyone as MSFT hate-mongers. It will only get worse. If the revenue stream is threatened MSFT will slip in another forced update make it more and more difficult to switch to alternatives. Because, get this, MSFT can charge you all the way up to your switching costs. The only way it can increase revenue is by increasing your switching cost.
Put yourself in MSFT's shoes and imagine what you would do. A security issue crops up. One team comes back with a solution that does not break all the competitors products. The other team comes up with a solution that incidentally breaks competitors products. Which one will you pick as "critical security update"? MSFT is doing exactly what it should rationally do, given its market share. It is the customers who are irrationally picking MSFT solutions against their own best interests.
Reduced functionality? (Score:5, Funny)
For a percentage of the users being able to use the web browser for half an hour is all they want and need. Not being able to run spyware/malware for that half hour might make this "Desired functionality" mode.
Sneezing can cause deactivation... (Score:5, Interesting)
At work, I have a laptop (ThinkPad T60) that dual-boots Ubuntu and Vista. Vista is on there only as a way to force myself to get used to it, as I have to support it. Early after Vista's release, an update _from Microsoft_ caused it to be deactivated, had to call MS. (This was later an acknowledged bug that they patched.)
More recently, I used Ghost to go from a 120GB drive down to an 80GB. This too knocked out the activation and the system went into reduced functionality mode. I had to call MS, eventually got someone in India (who I have to admit was very polite and spoke very well.) I had to read off what seemed like a 40 digit code _twice_. Once to the voice-activated system and then again to the person. (No, they apparently couldn't cache this very annoying and labourious bit of data entry.)
I told him why I was having to call and also warned that, as a SysAdmin, I do this kind of thing all of the time and that I was sure I'd be calling again with this exact same Microsoft-imposed problem on this exact same system. I was politely told that this is how the product works and that there was no way around this.
This from an MSDN-issued Vista Business edition. Ugh.
Thankfully, installing Ubuntu on it didn't knock out activation, though I wouldn't put it past MS in the future. If I didn't have to support it at work, I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole. My hope is that MS eventually tightens the screws enough to push everyone away. So far though, people seem to be much more tolerant of this sort of thing than I would have hoped.
I've posted about this before (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. I used to be a die-hard Microsoft fan, until they introduced the broken Activation scheme. Even back in the days of Windows XP. driver upgrades or reinstalls could de-activate Windows. This is why I am so adamantly against Activation schemes - at least schemes which do not allow for license transfers. It sucks, too. If delivering a bunch of workstations to a client where the client wants them pre-activated and added to their domain, you have to activate the system. Now, sometimes one will run into incompatibilities and have to upgrade a wireless driver or video driver (or add additional hardware - and yes, I've even seen USB device driver upgrades trigger deactivation) and if you've got the OEM version, guess what? You need to wait on hold with Microsoft to re-activate the system.
Granted, it doesn't happen often. It does have a knack of happening at exactly the wrong time.
Microsoft: you own the market. Drop the activation scheme. Also, where XP is nearing end of life, isn't it time to follow through with your promise to release a patch which will eliminate the need to activate Windows XP? I mean, Vista has been out for nearly a year now. . .
Timing (Score:5, Funny)
Would this be a bad time to mention that Leopard has 300 new features [apple.com]?
Or that you don't even have a serial number to enter, much less activation concerns?
Windows guys, if you are tired of Mac "fanbois" kicking you in the rear stop issuing us steel-toed boots and bending over with a big target taped to your posterior!
Something is Wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Top management decisions at MS are loading up their legitimate customers with extra work, lost income and frustration. Frustration is what doomed T-Mobile's relationship with me, and I dumped them in spite of their cancellation fee (reduce my "plan" and they automatically tack on another 2 year minimum period before I could cancel for free - that is the definition of CRAP.).
Not all the frustrations come from DRM. For heaven's sake, Registry glitches and other things that don't or stop working are a pain in XP. My WiFi on XP simply disappeared as an option in the Networking section. That has NEVER happened on my Macs.
If I ever get a chance to run SolidWorks on something other than Windows, I'll be one of the first to jump ship from Microsoft...forever.
This happened to me this past weekend (Score:5, Interesting)
Warning! Warning! You have three days to activate Vista or it will be in reduced functionality mode.
WTF? The video card was the first hardware change in six months. And WTF is with the three day warning when I can run Vista as a non-registered user for weeks??
*Fine* I click on the activation icon and get told my license is already in use so I have to do the telephone activation.
I hate the telephone activation. First you have to phone them up and type in the 46 number sequence (WTF, am I arming an ICBM here?) then they always tell you that you'll have to talk to a representative who asks you for the 46 number sequence again since the last machine just went and chucked out the one you just spent ten minutes reading into the phone. Then you have to type in a different 46 digit ICBM arming code to use the OS you already paid money for. The call cost $5 on my friend's pay-as-you-go cell phone.
Hey, Microsoft! I paid $300 for your POS OS. If I had pirated it I would have none of this bullcrap but no, I had to be an honest customer and this is my reward. Do you wonder people hate you?
And this is caused by driver updating yet. The one thing a Vista user has no choice but to do is update all multimedia drivers every few weeks as new releases come out to fix the previous releases problems with Vista.
Amazing business model there, Lou. You guys think of this by yourselves, did you?
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
But hey, it's your money, your PC, your loss.
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How much Apple and Red Hat stock does Bill have (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Linux will never do this (Score:5, Funny)
Oh really? Never say never [linuxgenui...antage.org]. ;)
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