Was authentication all hype?

[Engineer]

Before purchasing XP (I purchased it legitimately) I read a lot about it. One of the recurring negative themes of XP was authentication. How users would have to "authenticate" or "activate" with MS whenever they installed XP.

As we know, XP has it's 30 day warning telling you to activate the OS via internet or telephone. The consequences of failing to do so was shut down of the system or lock up. And for those of us who wanted to install their copy of XP on additional PC's or lend the OEM disk to friends, MS would shut down the original or first install system as a consequnce.

I have only authenticated twice since I bought XP, upon initial installation and when I bought a new motherboard. I never had a problem and never expected to.

But I have friends and I am also aware of others who have authenticated multiple times (wasn't there a limit of 6??) or have installed their copy of XP onto other systems and nothing has happened.

So was this all hype? Has MS not been able to enforce it's own "security" policies. I spoke to a MS tech support rep. who gauranteed me that any system with a illegal copy of XP would be shut down. What happened?

I have never heard of anyone having their system shut down because of an illegal copy of XP or by loading it onto multiple systems, have any of you?

Thanks
Engineer

 

[Nick M]

Nah. I have XP Pro retail, and well, it's not exactly legal, in the terms that it is burned from a legal copy, but, a lot of people use it.

There is no need to activate or whatever with this, if there was, I would kill myself...well, not myself, rather Windows.

I clean install every month or so, I have my reasons.

If I needed to activate, and activate, and activate, and ugh.

 

[Burpster]

the activation lasted about 60 seconds or so before the hackers got on it made work arounds ...i can generate fully valid keys myself now as can many others

half the members here would lose they're XP if that was the case

just imagine when all software does this and you have to clean install 20 or 30 apps and all require a phone call to the vendor ..see how much ppl like it then


i made a mistake a while back(was tired) and actually registered my copy with a generated key .....Don Knotts is a registered XP Pro Corp user now ...older members will know who he is

 

[Blue]

i believe MS introduced new plans to reduce illegal copying and use of WinXP. One part of that plan is to install a database of legal product keys, that would allow windows update to better determine whether users of that service have legitimate versions of WinXP. That is, obviously, taking some time to do. I seem to recall something about an April timeframe for a new server ... MS has left its options open as to what action it is prepared to take when identifying inappropriate software.

If you're using your pc as a glorfied gaming console, i wouldn't worry too much about what games update may or may not play with your pc, but if your enterprise depends on what you are running, I'd suggest you make sure you haven't taken any shortcuts.

Thanks my 2 cents