Microsoft makes copying Vista a monster task

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Microsoft makes invalidating Vista an easy task

I don't know about everyone else here, but it really perturbs me when, as a legitimate non-pirating customer of ANYTHING, I get shoveled into the pirate bin. Allow me to explain.

A week or two ago I decided to play a game called Maple Story (Check it out at www.nexon.net .) I had played it in the past on XP and generally found it to be a pleasant and fun time killer. The download and installation on Vista completed smoothly and all seemed to be working just perfect until I tried to run the game. After the standard UAC bubble I got a brief message from Vista stating something along the lines of "This program was not designed for Windows Vista, bla bla bla."

Of course I didn't think much about it since simple incompatibilities are part and parcel with any new release of an OS. Never the less, Vista gave me an option to run the program anyway. So, figuring that the worst that could happen would be that my computer would lock up, I decided to at least try to get it to work. To my great pleasure the game ran fine, perhaps better than on XP!

After playing for several hours my connection to the server was lost and I was dropped back into Windows where, low and behold, I was greeted by a box stating that I needed to validate my copy of Vista again. I followed the instructions to the T and upon the final step I am told that my copy of Vista was invalid! On top of this upon a restart I was immediately dropped into Reduced Functionality mode (that's right, no 30 day warning period) with my start bar missing and IE as the only program I could use.

This got me a touch perturbed but I'm generally a laid-back guy so I simply reformatted and re-installed. Validation on the new install of Vista passed and I figured there must have been some odd case of just the wrong stars aligning. So, thinking that it couldn't possibly have been Maple Story that caused my whole OS to invalidate, I re-installed it and played for a few more hours. Guess what I find when I close the program. That's right, invalid copy of Windows!

My computer is an Acer 2423 WXCI travelmate laptop upgraded to a 120 GB HDD and 2 Gigs of RAM. I have not done anything else "strange" to my copy of Windows Vista Business or my computer that might cause invalidation. The copy I have was acquired through my school as part of an academic program. Again, to reiterate, my copy of Vista validates perfectly BEFORE I install Maple Story but NOT after.

If it is this easy to invalidate a copy of Vista BY ACCIDENT, can you imagine the viruses/malaware that will be coming out soon? Before Vista if you got a virus you at least had a small chance of recovering your system. Now I fear "the three R's" -Reboot, Reformat, Re-install, will be our only option.

Posted by: Eight_Quarter_Bit   Posted on: 04/10/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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