Genunuine Advantage Problem

[Guest Dave Dewire]

I now there is a forum for Genunuine Advantage but I posted there and they

suggested I post my issue here.

 

Im seeing a problem with Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications that I just

cant explain.

 

Bascially for the last two months my orgnaization has been seeing hundreds

(atleast 300 that I know of, problem many more) of WXP PCs coming up with

non-genuine messages.

 

To be clear, I am 100% certain our VLK is still valid. Running Genuine

Advantage diagnostics passes every test and going out to the Genuine

Advantage validation site tells me I am valid which begs the question on why

this happened to begin with. As of yesterday it was still happening on PCs

that were not doing it a few days ago. We do have PC with this same VLK that

have not (yet) had this problem. We did not have this problem prior to mid

December 2007.

 

My best guess at this point is that Im not having a Validation problem, Im

having a Notification problem.

 

I did open an incedent with Microsoft Support but they want me in front of a

bad machine to troubleshoot and therein lies the problem. In ever single

case if I logon on the PC 3 times the problem goes away which means by the

time I hear that its happening, they have already logged into it atleast once

and something has already changed. To make it even more confusing, half the

PCs have Deepfreeze installed on them so all changes are undone every reboot

yet 3 logons fixes those as well. To be clear, 3 reboots does not fix them,

they must be logged in 3 times. I will also note that even running the WGA

diagnostics seems to fix the problem with just 1 logon, I suspect the

diagnostics alone are updating WGA to the most current version before they

run and that fixes the problem as well.

 

Based on what Ive read on this forum, WGA is not required nor recomended for

enterprise computers and the solution is to not install WGA on enterprise

PCs. Unfortunately the horses are already out of the barn, we do use WSUS

but WGA isnt updated via WSUS and based on some logging Ive done, I see

atleast 20 different versions of WGA installed (as far back as 1.3.0254.0) on

various PCs from when their last manual windows update was ran. At this

point it isnt clear if its a particular version causing the problem or

perhaps it only happens when windows decides it wants to revalidate and has

an old version. That wouldnt explain why PCs with deepfreeze that havent

changed in any way for alteast several months would want to revalidate but

thats a different issue.

 

The only solutions I can come up with are to either rip out WGA, which

someone could accidently put back or intentially put back if they needed to

download something manually from Microsoft. The other option would be to

always push out the the latest WGA update via a different process. This

would by no means be easy because half the machine have deepfreeze on them

and it doesnt guarentee it would fix the problem. The other problem with

this is that the most current version of the WGA update KB905474 v1.7.18.1

released 12/14/2007 does not have the most current version of files for WGA.

I already have PCs with 1.7.59.1 on them which begs the question of how I

automate the install of the latest version when there is no install for it.

 

I dont expect to ever figure out what caused it but Im at a loss as to how

to prevent it in the future and I cant have this continue to happen on a

large scale.

 

Id be happy to reopen the incident but since I cant recreate the problem, I

cant really tell what is happening. Based on what Im seeing, I dont believe

changing to a different VLK would have prevented this problem.

 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot this further or what to do

about it?

 

Thanks,

Dave

[Guest Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Re: Genunuine Advantage Problem

 

You need to open a WGA support request directly with Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?gprid=9860

 

--

Carey Frisch

Microsoft MVP

Windows Shell/User

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

"Dave Dewire" <DaveDewire@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:52671E31-25DE-46C8-9A06-FA0318A727D6@microsoft.com...

I now there is a forum for Genunuine Advantage but I posted there and they

suggested I post my issue here.

 

Im seeing a problem with Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications that I just

cant explain.

 

Bascially for the last two months my orgnaization has been seeing hundreds

(atleast 300 that I know of, problem many more) of WXP PCs coming up with

non-genuine messages.

 

To be clear, I am 100% certain our VLK is still valid. Running Genuine

Advantage diagnostics passes every test and going out to the Genuine

Advantage validation site tells me I am valid which begs the question on why

this happened to begin with. As of yesterday it was still happening on PCs

that were not doing it a few days ago. We do have PC with this same VLK that

have not (yet) had this problem. We did not have this problem prior to mid

December 2007.

 

My best guess at this point is that Im not having a Validation problem, Im

having a Notification problem.

 

I did open an incedent with Microsoft Support but they want me in front of a

bad machine to troubleshoot and therein lies the problem. In ever single

case if I logon on the PC 3 times the problem goes away which means by the

time I hear that its happening, they have already logged into it atleast once

and something has already changed. To make it even more confusing, half the

PCs have Deepfreeze installed on them so all changes are undone every reboot

yet 3 logons fixes those as well. To be clear, 3 reboots does not fix them,

they must be logged in 3 times. I will also note that even running the WGA

diagnostics seems to fix the problem with just 1 logon, I suspect the

diagnostics alone are updating WGA to the most current version before they

run and that fixes the problem as well.

 

Based on what Ive read on this forum, WGA is not required nor recomended for

enterprise computers and the solution is to not install WGA on enterprise

PCs. Unfortunately the horses are already out of the barn, we do use WSUS

but WGA isnt updated via WSUS and based on some logging Ive done, I see

atleast 20 different versions of WGA installed (as far back as 1.3.0254.0) on

various PCs from when their last manual windows update was ran. At this

point it isnt clear if its a particular version causing the problem or

perhaps it only happens when windows decides it wants to revalidate and has

an old version. That wouldnt explain why PCs with deepfreeze that havent

changed in any way for alteast several months would want to revalidate but

thats a different issue.

 

The only solutions I can come up with are to either rip out WGA, which

someone could accidently put back or intentially put back if they needed to

download something manually from Microsoft. The other option would be to

always push out the the latest WGA update via a different process. This

would by no means be easy because half the machine have deepfreeze on them

and it doesnt guarentee it would fix the problem. The other problem with

this is that the most current version of the WGA update KB905474 v1.7.18.1

released 12/14/2007 does not have the most current version of files for WGA.

I already have PCs with 1.7.59.1 on them which begs the question of how I

automate the install of the latest version when there is no install for it.

 

I dont expect to ever figure out what caused it but Im at a loss as to how

to prevent it in the future and I cant have this continue to happen on a

large scale.

 

Id be happy to reopen the incident but since I cant recreate the problem, I

cant really tell what is happening. Based on what Im seeing, I dont believe

changing to a different VLK would have prevented this problem.

 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot this further or what to do

about it?

 

Thanks,

Dave