Microsoft does throttle illegal copies

Hagar

Hagar

Hagar

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Tending to be right.
A friend of mine, has a Dell PC which another friend installed WindowsXP SP3 on from one of these cracked OEM disks. he has been unable to get onto the internet for some time, so he called me to look at the machine.
All appeared normal but there was no way he was able to connect even though the network was showing good wireless signal strength. I installed a new adaptor, again no connection but the network was there.
I installed for him a Dell windows XP SP2 clean install and put SP3 on from the website. Everything worked Hunky Dory, internet access etc. This is a legal copy activated now as he has the correct XP licence on the machine.
This week he rang me saying it was running slow. I asked him a few questions, yes it was updating, yes he had had the windows genuine advantage download and cancelled it without running it.
I suggested he ran it next time it showed up which he did. The machine is now working as it should. Pentium 4 2.8GHz 2Gb DDR2 so not speedy but no slouch in XP.
I believe that this is indicative of positive intervention by Microsoft on known dodgy copies of operating systems.

andy
 
I doubt that's it, windows will be an annoyance when there's a dodgy licence on the machine but it doesn't flat out cripple your machine and I've fixed my fair share of dodgy windows installs.
 
Hairybudda said:
I doubt that's it, windows will be an annoyance when there's a dodgy licence on the machine but it doesn't flat out cripple your machine and I've fixed my fair share of dodgy windows installs.
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I concur, unless you performed a performance review (looking into Task Manager, Event Viewer etc) there could be a lot of reasons why it was running slowly.
 
nkata said:
I asked him a few questions, yes it was updating, yes he had had the windows genuine advantage download and cancelled it without running it. I suggested he ran it next time it showed up which he did. The machine is now working as it should. Pentium 4 2.8GHz 2Gb DDR2 so not speedy but no slouch in XP.
Click to expand...

What you're saying there, though, is not just that MS cripples known dodgy copies, but that MS also cripples every install where the WGA download is rejected? That every user is treated as guilty until proven innocent?

That's not realistic. There would be an outrage if MS was crippling systems based purely on suspicion. You wouldn't be the first to discover it!
 
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If your "friend" has a habbit of using pirated software I think he may want to take a closer look for malware/tojan/virus/botnet/whatever lurking on the machine rather than "omg teh M$ iz in mah mach1n3 makinz 1t sl0w."

In particular if it starts off OK and only slows down after time (presumably as additional software is installed)

Still, always nice to see someone pirating software have problems. In a distinctly childish manner I say.

Haha!!! :)
losientoe.gif
 
If they did the results would be repeatable and someone would have repeated it in a controlled environment, they haven't ergo MS does not throttle anything.
 
You are probably right, it is such a coincidence that when he was illegal he had all sorts of problems, when he was legal but had not completed the genuine advantage it was slowing down. immediately the validation has been done, it is noticeably quicker, why call it advantage if there is none? The illegal software was clean from a known source.
He only uses the machine for two tasks, photoshop and browsing, nothing else.

I must state that I do not condone illegal software, an audit on my machine would find none.
 
I've experienced Windows XP locking down due to failed validation, your friend's symptoms are completely unrelated mate :).

There's a bigger chance of ET landing on earth. :p
 
While I have legal copies of Windows, for ease of use, I have cracked all my installs ( So, I can simply plop the Disk in, do the setup stuff and walk away, so when I return its on the desktop ready to use ) and I have done this for many years now.

I can safely say that MS do nothign to affect the use of the PC.

If your mates PC seems to be running slow, then it will be something like the icky sites he goes to is filling his PC with rudy bits, or perhaps it could be something like bad ram or a dying PSU - things like those can cause a PC to start gettign sluggish without actually crashing it...
 
haha, majority of pirate software has malware/viruses, ect. I have proven it with about 42 copys of windows from xp/vista/7 downloaded from various sites.
 
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