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View Full Version : Bizarre incident with Windows Genuine Advantage


wayskobfssae
03-28-2009, 08:59 PM
My g/f just switched on her PC, and got a notice requesting her giving her the summary of what Windows Genuine Advantage does, and asking her to install it. I'm a little perplexed by this, because WGA should already be installed on her PC. If it isn't, then somehow her OS has been slipping past a lot of MS's security features, because from what I understand, it's not even possible to use Windows Update without WGA. Her copy of Windows XP was verified months ago, and she's been using automated Windows Update all this time, which shouldn't work without WGA. Now suddenly she gets a notice asking her to install this? If I remember correctly, WGA is automatically installed before any other updates can be run from the MS website.

I looked it up on Wiki and interestingly, it says that the last update for WGA was March 27, 2007. Since this is the first time she's rebooted since March 27 of this year, I thought perhaps this was somehow related. Her system clock has the correct year of 2009 though.

Any other XP users gotten a notification today? I don't know if this is something I should be concerned about (could this be some kind of malware pretending to be an MS update?) And does anyone know if WGA is supposed to show up in the list of installed programs?

Mr.Fibbles
03-28-2009, 09:36 PM
I ran a Windows update expecting IE 8 but got a WGA update as well. It is really annoying.

Dave-ros
03-29-2009, 05:48 AM
Deliberately went to Windows Update website and got nothing about WGA. I may well have installed it manually before, in which case I suspect it's not needed for automatic updates, just if you go to the website and tell it to scan ;)

ZaphodB
03-29-2009, 02:37 PM
Yeah, it's on my updates shield right now. And it's not the first time since my install, more like the 3rd. MS does this periodically it seems to check to make sure your windows code hasn't been used on another machine, whether it has been or not. It like they're saying "Just wanna make sure this is still on just one machine".

Phayzon
03-29-2009, 07:20 PM
Any other XP users gotten a notification today?

Oddly enough, I did. Although this was on a freshly reformatted and clean install of XP Pro on a machine for work so I didnt think anything out of the ordinary about it. :)

Wamplet
03-30-2009, 07:16 PM
I did too. Been showing up on the work computers as well.

wayskobfssae
03-31-2009, 10:25 AM
Now that I think of it, the date this popped up was probably a coincidence. Microsoft is probably doing extra checks since there's probably more people using Windows Update than ever before in an effort to protect their systems in the midst of the April Fools Day worm panic.

Bludd
03-31-2009, 12:39 PM
I got a new WGA client 27.03.2009.