More details on this weekend's WGA validation issue

Nick White — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:39:00 GMT

Further investigation by our WGA team has brought to light more information on the WGA validation issue affecting users this past weekend. Alex Kochis on the WGA blog breaks down the events of the weekend that caused the validation failure, how it was identified and what was done to fix it, and changes we've made to WGA as a result. The upshot is that we're working to improve WGA, having learned much from this failure, and the team, with Alex in the lead, is taking the matter and its impact very seriously.

Among the points that Alex calls out, one is that around 12,000 customers were affected worldwide. While I stated on Saturday that "very few customers" were affected -- a poor choice of words, I will be the first to admit --, this by no means was meant to downplay the experience endured by those customers. As Alex puts it, "one bad customer experience is one too many," and I completely agree. That's the most important point and cannot be overstated. My apologies to anyone who felt slighted by interpreting that MS' stance was less than responsive and empathetic; I can assure you that the team worked non-stop to restore service to affected Genuine users.

I'll not go into the details of the issue here but instead leave you to review them on Alex's blog. Also, Alex has invited those with questions to address them to him via his blog.

Addressing WGA validation issues

Nick White — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:39:00 GMT

Earlier today (25 August) we began receiving reports of Windows Vista customers running genuine systems but experiencing failures when attempting a Windows Genuine Advantage validation. This situation has since been resolved and validations are now being processed successfully.

We've since learned that very few customers were affected. Sr. Product Manager Alex Kochis and a team of engineers have been working on the issue and has blogged about it to keep customers up-to-date. Customers who received an incorrect validation response can fix their system by revalidating. I'd encourage anyone who received a validation failure since Friday evening to visit this site now; after successfully revalidating, any affected system should be rebooted to ensure that genuine-only features are restored.

Alex will be updating his blog with information as more information comes to light.

Windows Vista Team Blog : WGA

More details on this weekend's WGA validation issue

Addressing WGA validation issues