Pirated Vista -- A darkness descends!

How would MS know you'd refused to activate? OK, I'll admit that one of my copies of Vista is Vista Ultimate, downloaded as an experiment to see if I could get the crack to work that stopped that countdown. So far it's counted down to 27 days, (God knows why) and this goes back to November. TweakVI reveals the key so if it did start to count down, I could enter that. I'm just wondering if I'd get the dreaded black screen! Hell, I already have a problem with firefox periodically giving me black screens anyway, along with Visual Studio, and as I said, I have two legit copies of Vista. This other one is only on a 20 gig partition which was set up just to test betas - the PC mainly runs XP as that's what the users are most happy with.

I don't think Microsoft needs to know that you
refused to activate. I thought it was built into the OS,
that if you fail to activate, it will automatically go into
the "reduced functionality" mode. Otherwise this is all an
idle threat, and piracy will thrive as usual.

Yeah, that's if it counts down from 30 days. I've managed successfully to stop the timer and with changing a few registry names have so far avoided MS disabling this. So Vista Ultimate is stuck at 27 days to activation and as long as it doesn't reach zero, they couldn't possibly even be aware that I'd installed it.

Hmmm the screen goes black after an hour the start menu just disappears on it's own... Wait a minute, they had a button to turn Vista into Windows 95 ??????

=O

Or ME ..... but hey, Vista is worse and buggier than even Me at it's height right now. Peculiar things happen which you simply can't troubleshoot because they don't make sense.

Hi Moira,

Firstly, might I appologise for my bad manners in not asking after you and yours in my last post. You have not been here so regularly, I hope it is holidays and happy events that are to blame :D

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So is this for all pirated copies, or just ones released recently after this mechanism was thought up?

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As I understand things, this mechanism is embedded in the Windows OS. So, if you have a "standard pirate copy", that will still be in there waiting to happen.

In general, all pirates do is try to circumvent the authentication process.......... they don't look at what happens after that.

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Best thing is never to activate

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Ah! I think that there might be a slight misunderstanding here? The "activation" is different from "registration" . If you do not "activate" then it will die.............. the registration is optional (although I always do it) and has no effect on the functionality.

Subsequently, the WGA mechanism will "authenticate" the installation. That would be when they check for stolen keys and such, I would imagine.

Pirates can probably circumvent the initial acivation, but then you are on your own. If the installation fails a subsequent validation (which is what this is) you get flagged as a pirate.

This would be all well and good if M$ could write decent software for their DRM.............. but they obviously can't :)

Well, I'm amazed my copy is still going tbh .... I only did it to see if I could. I allow updates to download but look at what is going to install first. I can't imagine why it lost 3 days (?) not the sort of thing you can ask about generally is it? :)

I've had a bit of a rough time lately actually - problems with my rheumatoid arthritis and the subsequent medication have accounted for a few "lost" days recently, and I've also got an operation coming up to sew back together my ruptured achilles tendon, which is going to need muscle grafting as the ends have contracted too much to meet. It'll mean 3 months in plaster, 2 weeks full leg plaster and then intensive physio afterwards. That's on October 2nd - the only light at the end of the tunnel is a trip to New Zealand in February. The main cause of this rupture was taking high doses of steroids for pain relief (iatrogenic diseases I think they're called, ie treatment induced).

So you have RA and if they gave you real Pain Killers you wouldn't need surgery now? Awesome!

I know how you feel, believe me. PT isn't fun, I got to stuff my leg into a burning hot pool of water (I don't even take hot showers because I like water to be either cool or warm, but not anywhere near hot) so my leg was burned up the whole time and then they made me move it in what seemed to be the same manner people use to get secrets out of people all the while refusing to give me anything for it even after one of the girls working on me recommended it to the Dr after seeing what was actually going on inside my bone... Well what was left of it, the ankle bone was shattered and had fragments floating around rubbing into things making it hurt even if it wasn't being moved.

Still refused anything. They offered me Motrin and two other things I'm deathly allergic too which is WELL documented in my file as the cortizone shot they said "try or don't get anything at all" put me in the ER after I turned bright red and my skin was hot to touch and my breathing wasn't anywhere near normal... Which finally made them believe I was telling the truth when I said "No really, I'm allergic to those".

All it took was me almost dying in the ER :) Cool huh? And I still didn't get anything lol. Funny how it's illegal to give to much but not illegal to give nothing of anything that may actually work and just let someone suffer.

Well, I was getting dihydrocodeine as well, but my urgent referral to the pain management clinic was still not producing an appointment after 3 months - the specialist, by the time I did see him, said my pain had been mismanaged ending up with me on a ridiculous amount of dhc. The fact that he'd taken 3 months to see me didn't seem to occur to him!

Now I'm on methadone, which has its own problems, believe me. First, I feel like a drug addict and second, I *am* addicted to it because you can't physically take the stuff on a regular basis and not be. I get a month's supply at once and it's sooooo hard to stick to the prescribed amounts and not take a bit extra, hence the last few days of the month have seen me off work and in bed with withdrawal symptoms. But I refuse to ask for the script early as apparently they give you one more chance if you do that, then take you off the programme and this is so much more effective then dihydrocodeine.

It's also going to create problems with my operation - you aren't allowed to bring any controlled drugs into hospital with you, so presumably they'll give me what I need, but I'm being blind dosed (ie I don't know what I'm getting and give feedback every month, while they vary the dose), so that's going to be fun for the anaesthetist. It's also going to be fun for the plane journey to New Zealand :( imagine getting through security with a liquid which is also a controlled drug! And my main treatment, the methotrexate is injections which I carry around - we stop in Dubai and I've got visions of ending up in Death Row for drug trafficking!

Methadone shouldn't make you feel like an addict, you have a need for something, and you have it for that reason. Methadone is usually associated with addicts because that's what they use to treat Heroin addiction.

They do that because Methadone was invented in Germany during WW2 because they were short on Morphine for soldiers which was also synthesized the first time in Germany by William Suertenur looking for a way to make Opium stronger and when they ran short, they invented Methadone as a pain killer similar to Morphine, but it doesn't work as well, but DOES have a WAY longer half life.

Half life means the amount of time before half the dose is in your body. Most Opiates have a short half life but Methadone doesn't, it stays in the body longer, so therefore it makes it easier to treat addicts to Heroin as they aren't craving every 8 to 12 hours and can get off the idea of needing something that quickly, and also it's a lot less potent than most Opiates, meaning even though it does have pain killing effects as do all Opiates, it's not very strong and therefore has a smaller chance of addiction as there isn't really a "high" from it because of the low strength.

For what it's worth, where you're going has stronger meds over the counter in terms of pain relief, but I don't recommend buying any as then that's mixing which can be dangerous to say the least. As long as you remember to call ahead to tell them your situation and ask what you need to bring to prove you have a valid script (like for example the papers that it came with) you shouldn't have a problem.

You should be able to call and ask though and tell them what is happening and what you have a script for, and they can let you know for sure what you can do so you won't have any problems or hand cuffs.

I do recommend the phone call though, it'll save you an hour of questions when you get there lol. Just be honest and flat out with them of what has happened, and you'll be fine.