Microsoft insists that its Windows Genuine Activation anti-piracy tool is nearly flawless, and they are “confident that validation results are accurate.”
Sorry, but that’s a load of crap. And if you don’t believe me, go read Microsoft’s own support forums.
That’s what I did, with the help of a researcher. We found that Microsoft’s own support representatives now acknowledge that WGA problems “are coming up more commonly.” We found examples of people who were running copies of Windows XP that are incontrovertibly legitimate and who did everything Microsoft asked of them who were unable to resolve their WGA problems. We found a widely used security tool from McAfee that triggered false WGA counterfeit notices for a full month. And we tallied the numbers to discover that a staggering 42% of the people who reported WGA failures on Microsoft’s official support forum were running Genuine copies of Windows XP.
It’s a disgrace. And Microsoft didn’t want to hear the details when I offered to share them.
I’ve posted the whole story at ZDNet:
Microsoft admits WGA failures “coming up more commonly now”
If you have questions or comments, you can leave them in the Talkback section there or in the comments here.
Ed Bott 
And I wonder how many counterfeit installations that have been cracked are out there – including mine. And I don’t mean just shutting off the nag screen, but fully cracked, able to access all of Windows Updates.