Microsoft: We're targeting all Vista activation hacks

If you've been using one of two common hacks to run Windows Vista without going through activation, Microsoft has you in its cross-hairs. It's rolling out patches, through Vista SP1 and Windows Update, that will recognize those hacks on your PC. That's the bad news. The good news is that the much-reviled Windows Geniune Advantage continues to get weaker, as I'll show you in a series of screenshots.

Microsoft, in its Windows Genuine Advantage blog, said yesterday that "in SP1 we will disable two of the most common exploits to our product activation technology. This means that users who have the exploits loaded on their systems will find those exploits disabled by SP1, and they will be asked to activate their copy of Windows Vista."

The company will also roll out a patch, via Windows Updates, that will do the same thing. There are two hacks involved, the OEM BIOS and Grace Timer exploits. In the OEM BIOS hack, Vista is tricked into thinking it's an OEM version. In the Grace Timer hack, Registry changes are made that tells Vista not to check for activation until a very distant time in the future.

When SP1 or the new patch finds one of those hacks, it displays the following screenshot:

Note the scary-sounding wording here --- it claims that you need to "repair Windows," as if Vista is damaged in some way. Of course, that's not the case; the operating system merely has one of the two activation hacks on it.

If you want to turn off one of the hacks, click the link on the screen, and you'll be sent to a Web page telling you how to do it. You'll then have to activate Vista.

It's hard to imagine anyone actually clicking the link to find out how to deactivate the hack --- after all, they hacked Vista in the first place. But Microsoft can wish, can't it?

Microsoft won't actually deactivate either of the hacks on its own. It's leaving it up to you to do that, although in the future, the company says that it will have a scheme that will deactivate them.

As I've written about previously, SP1 also does away with the dreaded Kill Switch that would in essence make Vista unusable unless you activate your copy of Windows. With SP1, you'll get the following notice if you don't activate Vista after a certain grace period.

The screen vamooses after 15 seconds if you don't activate Vista. If you don't activate after you see the screen, when you log into Vista, here's what happens according to the WGA blog:

The background wallpaper color will be set to black. This setting will be confirmed and reset every hour meaning that a user can change the wallpaper to a favorite image but each hour after being logged in, the system will reset the desktop background to black. When that happens, a system tray balloon notification will advise the customer to activate their copy of Windows.

Here's a screenshot of that balloon notification:

This is mildly annoying, but not as bad as deactivating Windows, which in essence used to happen under Vista. So at least Microsoft is moving in the right direction. Of course, the real answer is to do away with WGA completely.