Black screens for pirate copies of Windows

i have cracked xp and have done and passed about 30 wga checks since this was announced and no blak screen for me

Comment by damafia at 1:26pm 24th December 2008

I cant see what the problem is with being stuck with a black screen on XP, because I used to get a blue one every time I started my Windows ME machine.........

Comment by Ady6UK at 6:14am 4th September 2008

Wait for Windows 7 - "the OS vista should have been." Hopefully it will live up to all the promises. Also Linux does kick Windows arse at everything except gaming, but that is down to the game developers. There isn't enough money in it for them. It would help if microsoft made DirectX open source, which I'm sure will be any day now ... ;-)

Comment by _irad_ at 3:55pm 3rd September 2008

Well i recently bought a brand spanking new PC with a shiney OEm version of Vista..... 2 days later it was wiped and installed an Old OEM edition of XP technically its illegal as its a different machine but the chasis with the label is up in my loft and Im fine with this... microsoft maybe not so much so.... but maybe when vista is up to service pack 5 I might take a look ... for now XP works for me just fine and who needs their daily incremental updates...a good security suite can pick up most things ... never been hacked yet....

Comment by akoli at 2:23am 3rd September 2008

MS Virtual Desktop Manager (ms powertoys) does this already, you set up the wallpaper for each of the virtual desktops and next time you logon it's reverted back to the defaults.

Comment by khatkar at 8:22am 2nd September 2008

MS Virtual Desktop Manager (ms powertoys) does this already, you set up the wallpaper for each of the virtual desktops and next time you logon it's reverted back to the defaults.

Comment by khatkar at 8:22am 2nd September 2008

MS Virtual Desktop Manager (ms powertoys) does this already, you set up the wallpaper for each of the virtual desktops and next time you logon it's reverted back to the defaults.

Comment by khatkar at 8:22am 2nd September 2008

Everyone who is intelligent enough to work P2P can "work the google on the internet machine" and find out how to get rid of WGA.

Comment by elextro987 at 9:09am 1st September 2008

"would the owners of cars like the B M W or ferraattii be pleased if some twat nicked m sold m and just got away with it . would they buyers of these cars be happy if a car they owned was a ringer and not ligite after paying £££$$$ . jj7" No, BUT, if I could duplicate their machine down to the bolt without depriving them of any use of it, they would have no room to complain. They would of course have room to complain if I sold them a "Ferrarie" or "B'and'W" as the real deal 8-) Solution: Use Ubuntu or the like. The free software guys (free as in freedom, not cost, although it is also cost-free) recognize copying software is not a big deal, and trying to make an artificial scarcity out of software in these days of high speed internet and CD burners is silly; they encourage people to make copies of it, and if one wishes they are encouraged to examine the inner workings and make improvements to it too. Just between Ubuntu 7.10 (released Oct. 2007) and 8.04 (released April 2008), they made many little tweaks that made it easier to use. It doesn't make sense if you're running a bunch of custom Windows apps, but if not, it's really quite nice.

Comment by hwertz at 1:03am 31st August 2008

Turned off windows update two years ago. Moved hard disk with XP intact from AMD PC to Intel PC last year no issues. Only missed IE7 which I can live without. Never had spyware or virus. Never needed .Net updates. DirectX reloads was the only pain and easy to solve. I reckon alot of (security) updates in past years slowed XP down.

Comment by kingwahwah at 4:36pm 30th August 2008

i did have a full bac up on my hard drive a full workin img....but then it died so i got non gen copy wud u spend 80 on a new copy wen yer dog kills it it was only a puppy and needed jabs and stuff i dont think so

Comment by damafia at 11:30am 30th August 2008

I can understand people using dodgy copies when XP came out but nowadays you can get a COA sticker for XP Pro for £10 which you can use to activate without any probs and you don't have to mess about with cracks and patches that are probably riddled with spyware and viruses. May not be 'letter of the law' legal but never had a problem activating one personally.

Comment by jaffo at 9:28am 30th August 2008

There are wallpaper-rotating utilities already that change your wallpaper every hour, have it set up so 'every hour' is only a few seconds after WGA turns the wallpaper black. Better still just turn off WGA using xpy (google it) or better still turn off automatic updates completely. If you use firefox and thunderbird instead of Internet Exploder and Outbreak Express you avoid the vast majority of security risks right there and don't really need those updates.

Comment by zcat_nz at 9:42pm 29th August 2008

A full genuine retail version. Amazingly, since it's been installed (multiple times on the same hardware) it's failed the WGA tests about 5 times. Then I have a huge headache of phoning MS, telling them my problem, getting put on hold, then putting in some new number. Finally it works... till the next installation. I'm just a home user of XP Pro, but I'm sure there are small businesses that may use a "not-so-legal" version of the OS. It's good that MS are taking note and acting upon this, but is changing the background and slapping on a watermark the only thing they could think of? - Capping some of the hardware, or even making the OS shut down would have been better. There are ways round; there always will be!

Comment by muther_trucker at 9:18pm 29th August 2008

would the owners of cars like the B M W or ferraattii be pleased if some twat nicked m sold m and just got away with it . would they buyers of these cars be happy if a car they owned was a ringer and not ligite after paying £££$$$ . jj7

Comment by kingjohn721 at 7:26pm 29th August 2008

i've only ever seen one counterfeit copy of XP fail WGA authentication, and it was using a very (2 years+) old XP crack. needless to say, my client is now running Genuine windows :)

Comment by 127_0_0_1 at 4:33pm 29th August 2008

So what happens when doing windows updates and they fail like usually in a work environment? Will it start displaying a pirate copy coz that isn’t going to be good for the user’s, and a hell of a lot more work for me?

Comment by blunder12 at 4:11pm 29th August 2008

hmm it seems fairly obvious to me u dont play games on ur pc, and if u do, u dont play them at the highest quality, wine is ok but it aint brilliant. not knockin linux btw, my web browser/music machine is ubuntu based, but for a games machine unfortunatly windows is the way to go, hmm wise up man ;/

Comment by manxspike at 3:21pm 29th August 2008

I don't think many businesses use pirated copies of Windows. The majority of businesses I've worked with/in or known are very wary of the PR nightmare that is being hit with a lawsuit for doing this. As for "my dog ate my CD"...backup copy??? We've all read the recent articles about pirating of various software types and imo your OS should be the one thing you never pirate. As for the WGA/Auto-update argument, I leave Auto-updates off because there are a few updatees that I won't want on my PC like smartcard encryption (as I don't use smartcards). Capping RAM usage on all pirated OS's would work - 128/256Mb. I mean, come on, most of us probably spend £hundreds on PC's (if not more), so to use a dodgy copy of the one piece of software that runs your machine (the one that will be on there the longest) is just a cop-out... gen XP Pro SP3: £80 - gen XP Pro x64 : £80

Comment by EdArch at 1:35pm 29th August 2008

Yes, let's be incompatible with every piece of business software and gaming software and hardware. It's fair to say that the 95% of the planet using Microsoft products have it all wrong and have wasted their hard earned cash buying software and compatible hardware that is totally useless. Nothing against Linux but comments like that are just pathetic.

Comment by crazyceo at 12:56pm 29th August 2008

This is more about putting businesses off using this. Imagine your running a large business, are cracking windows. Your client turns up and instantly can see every machine running illegally. Hmm, that'll look good wont it.

Comment by reashlin at 12:10pm 29th August 2008

Didn't they realise WGA was cracked a long LONG time ago? My original XP disk went into retirement years ago and I've been using hacked copies ever since (Some have very pretty shell replacements and it's just so much easier having all the updates slipstreamed into it rather than spending hours downloading them on each install), never had any problems with them....

Comment by cyberspice1 at 8:29am 29th August 2008

I've been using Linux for a good many years now. Not long after Windows ME came out I chose to switch to it as my main operating system. I admit I have tried XP Professional and Vista Home Premium and this is one of many reasons I don't use it, and don't recommend it. My girlfriend finds Linux to be easier, my mother, my sister, my father, my friends, my five year old niece all find Linux to be easier. I don't have to prove I have a valid copy of my operating system, I don't get treated like I am a pirate if some validation software makes a mistake. I don't have to answer to a company to use a fully functioning operating system. I don't get nagged, hassled, annoyed, pestered, poked, prodded, or just plain messed with by any software making business. I don't deal with my background being changed, or watermark on my desktop, or a 30 day period I can use software before being deactivated, I also don't have to register my copy, or activate it. I don't have problems with updates to my system that might make a mistake and decide that my copy isn't genuine software (not that this update will do that but I don't like running the risk). For that matter I don't have to worry about my software not being genuine. I am 100% legal and I can do just about anything I want. I will remain 100% legal and genuine by not using Microsoft products. One day you may win me back, but so far I cannot even see that with a very big telescope even remotely peaking up over the horizon. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Windows, I just see it as less usable and harder unless it is all you have used all your life, and this has the potential to add to that mess. Thank you Microsoft for not nagging me, but I guess you can't. :)

Comment by Draco at 4:58am 29th August 2008

I used to run a black desktop before I got object dock and had I had a screen full of icons. Still, I somehow failed a WGA test on 1 attempt years ago, hope I don't get any problems (genuine OEM XP pro)

Comment by mr_nips at 11:13pm 28th August 2008

Well this isn't gonna stop people getting pirate copies, i mean it's a bloody background what difference does it make? yeh ok your background won't be aesthetically pleasing but you can still use windows to it's full extent. Useless imo.

Comment by dr4ygon at 9:10pm 28th August 2008

Could this hit all the XP pro pirates even the Key gen ones with actual cd keys that work. I wonder. Yah i think that would work if they capped the ram usage of priate copy's at just 128 that would soon stop them.

Comment by Cool_CR at 9:31pm 28th August 2008

Well this isn't gonna stop people getting pirate copies, i mean it's a bloody background what difference does it make? yeh ok your background won't be aesthetically pleasing but you can still use windows to it's full extent. Useless imo.

Comment by dr4ygon at 9:10pm 28th August 2008

Ok having a plain black background will speed up your system a bit (not having to load a massive image) well done ms, deter pirates by making their pc's a little bit quicker what next capping how much ram vista uses for pirates?

Comment by EvilNeverDies at 7:47pm 28th August 2008

my mates boxer dog puppy ate 47 genuine cd's at his house while they went to a party last weekend, left the copied ones intact!!! but every singlr jewel case in the 300 cd plus collection was destryed!!!

Comment by manxspike at 7:14pm 28th August 2008

my mates boxer dog puppy ate 47 genuine cd's at his house while they went to a party last weekend, left the copied ones intact!!! but every singlr jewel case in the 300 cd plus collection was destryed!!!

Comment by manxspike at 7:14pm 28th August 2008

just don't run the WGA! I used to run a stripped down version called XP Performance which had new versions every month or so, so I never needed to run WGA I just got the updates with the new edition.

Comment by TWeaKoR at 7:07pm 28th August 2008

my cracked xp passes WGA TESTS all the time i did have full gen copy but it got destroyed by my dog it goes mad for any thing shiny lol i wasnt gonna fork out for a new one dont hate me lol

Comment by damafia at 6:53pm 28th August 2008

Most pirated copies of windows will pass WGA tests anyway...not that I or anyone else on this website would know that...

Comment by reashlin at 6:45pm 28th August 2008

? Im a bit baffeled as I currently us a plain black background as my wallpaper, Im sure other people must as well. So should I look at this as a 'feature' to help me maintain my prefered background????

Comment by SlashCom at 6:29pm 28th August 2008

So i guess someone will just make a macro to update the wall paper every 61mins for the pirate home users, by the way i have a genuine copy of xp £50

Comment by jinx26 at 5:39pm 28th August 2008

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