I've never ever been a supporter for online activation process for any product. Ever. On the one hand it is usually cracked the same day it is released, so no big benefits against piracy. On the other hand it is only a burden (at best) for a legitimate user and a time waster at worst. See, it happened to me, too. I have a legal and activated Vista Ultimate x86 version happily running. One day I decided to install PowerShell, so I went downloading it. Even though it is a free download, one has to validate the Windows for genuinity using Genuine [MS] Software tool as shown in picture below:
This is an annoyance at best (it takes time, installs an ActiveX, etc.) and a stupid problem at worst as it happened to me, see the picture below.
The tool doesn't recognize that my Windows is in fact activated, see the picture from System properties below:
So the only obstacle between me and PowerShell is this stupid tool. Of course I went googling and soon found this forum support message to same problem:
WTF? I have to phone around and mess with activation phone process (once again) just to fix [MS] tool bugs? Now, this is ridicolous – I have to loose valuable time if I want to download anything that requires this kind of validation (not to mention time spent on writing this post). Great job [MS]. I'll post an update when I fix the problem.
UPDATE: I didn't fix it the same day beacuse it was too late for [MS] support phone center. Instead, I hibernated my computer when I've finished working. Today, when I woke up the computer from coma, I got a new message box saying something like: "Your Windows is not genuine thus a lot of features will stop working (i.e. Aero)". Apparently ActiveX validator nuked my genuinity, too. Red alarm started to ringing in my head. I immediately called support I ended up with phone activation as it was mentioned in this support message. Everything works again, I just lost a cople of hours due to this problem. BTW, Slovene [MS] support people are good guys 🙂
Miha,
Don’t get me started about how f’d up this is, it’s happened to me twice, first time I had to pay for support, second time I just re-opend the closed ticket.
I’ve found that this happens when you have to download specfic content from MSDN and it wants to validate your copy of the Vista OS with and ACtiveX control. Is this what you did? After you validate you’re it stuck in an endless stupid loop “you’re not authentic” or some crap like that and “you must activate your copy” or some crap like that, and doing these steps just leave you frustrated.
I don’t know how much down time this caused me collectivly between the two incidents but I’d put it at close to 7 hours.
“slmgr -ipk”
or
“slmgr 4” … not sure offf the top of my head.
Stephen
Yes, PowerShell download is hosted on MSDN and I did exactly that (no other option though) – clicked on Validat button that invokes validation ActiveX control. You are frightening me with the lost time evaluation. Glb.