Planet Lowyat

Subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Microsoft will feed Windows Vista users an update in the next week to finger illegal copies installed with cracks that the company will bust when it rolls out Service Pack 1 (SP1) in mid-March.

The ‘update’ which will go out via Windows Update (WU) and install automatically on most Vista machines, will detect two cracks commonly used to activate pirated copies of the operating system. The cracks evade Vista’s built-in counterfeit-detection technology by sidestepping product activation and spoofing a legitimate installation.

One of the cracks, “Grace Timer,” extends Vista’s activation grace period, which is normally 30 days, until the year 2099. The other, called OEM BIOS, modifies system files and the PC’s BIOS to mimic the product activation done by computer-makers at the factory.

Both cracks will be blocked by Vista SP1, the major update that will hit WU as an optional download in mid-March and automatically download and install the next month.

Read more »