One of my very good friend called me up today telling me that he saw a news at a local newspaper saying that those with pirated copies of the Windows XP Professional operating system in their computers that are Internet-capable could find their screens going black and the icons vanishing as Microsoft Corp gets tough…

I immediately told my friend that it is impossible and might be a fake news because Microsoft wouldn’t go that far to make our screen go blackout as that is even worst than privacy invasion! Later I did a bit of googling and found that many people has started talking about it. Some people even mentioned that they’ve already encountered this problem and they had to do a hard reboot to recover from the “blackout”. The newspaper did mention that “To continue working, users will need to reset the machine’s desktop background. All will return to normal, but only for 60 minutes before another blackout occurs.”

At first I felt that this news is fake because I could only find Malaysian bloggers talking about it and of course they got this information from the local newspapers. So I decided to test and check it out myself to see if this “blackout and icon vanishing” penalty for pirated version of Windows XP Professional is true or not.

I plugged in my hard drive that I use for testing purposes, installed a clean Windows XP Professional with a genuine product key and also installed service pack 3 + all latest updates. Then I used Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder to change Windows Key to a pirate one (from eth0). Rebooted the computer and the logon interrupt message “You may be a victim of software counterfeiting. Click Resolve Now to get help with this problem.” window appears. I clicked Resolve Later and logged into Windows as normal. I waited for more than 60 minutes because I expect a screen blackout with all my icons go missing but nothing happened.

At first I thought that maybe I don’t have the latest WGA installed. I went to C:\Windows\System32 and found that LegitCheckControl.dll, WgaLogon.dll and WgaTray.exe files installed in my computer is version 1.8.31.0. From Microsoft Download site, the latest version of Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is version 1.8.0031.0 which is actually the same as 1.8.31.0. To be sure, I download WindowsXP-KB905474-ENU-x86-Standalone.exe and installed on my computer. So I have the latest WGA and using a non-genuine XP Pro key that failed the genuine validation, why isn’t my screen blackout and icon vanishing?

I searched further and found an official Windows Genuine Advantage blog website. It did explain about the latest update to WGA notifications for Windows XP Professional and I now understood what does the local newspapers meant by “blackout”.

After installing this new version of WGA Notifications on a copy of Windows XP that fails the validation, most users will discover on their next logon that their desktop has changed to a plain black background from whatever was there previously.

Windows XP Professional pirated blackout screen

You can of course go to Display Properties to set a new wallpaper or background color but every 60 minutes it will change back to the plain black background. This will continue to happen until that copy of Windows is genuine. Other than this, the user will see the addition of what Microsoft call the “persistent desktop notification” at the bottom right hand of the screen. It says “You may be a victim of software counterfeiting. This copy of Windows did not pass genuine Windows validation.”

You may be a victim of software counterfeiting. This copy of Windows did not pass genuine Windows validation

The notification is, however, translucent and also can be clicked through and objects underneath it can be interacted with. The notification appears above any object on the desktop, but underneath open windows or applications.

That’s about it. No scary total blackout that you have to do a hard reboot or vanishing icons… This only I think Steven Patrick, the person who wrote about the article in TheStar newspaper did a very bad job in explaining the WGA updates.

Microsoft is no longer selling Windows XP, that means the user that is using the pirated version of Windows XP Professional will have no choice but to upgrade to Windows Vista. I believe this is another move from Microsoft to push users to upgrade from XP to Vista. For those that don’t want to upgrade to Vista and wants to continue using XP, you can wait for the famous Windows Genuine Advantage Validation v1.8.31.0 Cracked eth0. If you hate the blackout and the watermark, you can uninstall WGA by using RemoveWGA 1.2. The author of RemoveWGA can no longer host the file but then RemoveWGA can still be downloaded from Softpedia. Or easier, don’t install KB905474 from Windows Update.

Update: Alex Kochis, the director of Genuine Microsoft Windows emailed me to clarify that Microsoft will continue to offer Windows XP legalization products to customers who need them including after Windows XP is not longer available for pre-install on OEM systems or at retail.

[ Download RemoveWGA 1.2 from Softpedia ]

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