Microsoft has renewed its drive towards the elimination of illegal copies of Windows Vista by issuing another automatic update. The update will scan a user’s system for the presence of any activation hacks and issue an alert containing a link to the legal activation site of Windows Vista.

Although the automatic update will not disable the Vista hack on a user’s system, it is still necessary for the user to legally activate the Vista installation since Vista SP1, which is due for release in March, will no longer have the reduced functionality mode. Instead, users will be given 15 second to activate their copies of Windows Vista. If the user chooses to delay the activation, the Vista system will display a black screen,  but this can be overcome by the user upon logging in to the system. But after one hour, the system will revert to the black screen plus a notification balloon will pop out reminding the user to activate Vista.

The automatic update did not include a utility to disable hacked installation of Vista to avoid interrupting users with a genuine Vista installation. Instead, a separate utility that will do this task will be issued later on. This utility will be offered as a separate download.

This update will surely annoy Vista hackers but I doubt if it will stop them from looking for alternative ways to bypass this system procedure to make a fully working pirated copy of Windows Vista.

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Entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 9:00 am under Windows Vista.