After the recent Skype outage episode, it’s now Microsoft Corp, who had a 19 hour Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) meltdown. Any legitimate Vista or XP user trying to validate his copy of Windows was identified as using pirated software.
Vista users had certain features like Aero interface and ReadyBoost were removed until the validation succeed. Microsoft’s WGA Validation Team who were probably enjoying their weekend quickly fixed the problem within 19 hours after being reported.
WGA Program Manager, Phil Liu said in a forum post “We are aware it is a server-side issue – the cause is unknown at this current time”. All users who couldn’t validate their copy of Windows this weekend can try re-validation and rebooting to get all features back.
Although it’s just a small server side issue and Microsoft was able to quickly fix it, I don’t think treating legitimate customers as criminals is one of the best things to be done inorder to retain them for a long time.
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