There have been some uncertainty lately as a report published by ComputerWorld stated that Microsoft would let its "Reduced Functionality" feature, dubbed "Black Screen of Death," loose in a near future Windows Genuine Advantage update. The update would lead to that any illegal copies of Vista would be severely crippled after one hour of browsing; no taskbar, no desktop, no start menu. However the report also claimed that this update would take affect this week already. That's not true. The update is slated for release sometime soon, but Microsoft is unwilling to say when.
This update mainly strikes OEM copies that started leaking even before the new operating system was launched, and it is uncertain how it will affect any retail copies that are not authentic, and cracked in various ways.
The Reduced Functionality will also lead to restriction of security updates, but according to information we've received users that download illegal copies are also discouraged of downloading updates from Microsoft, and instead use third-party security applications (firewalls and antivirus), making this update far from the weapon against piracy Microsoft wants it to be.
Hopefully we will not have the same problems with Vista as there were with XP, where quite a lot of companies all of a sudden was left with annoying popups and reduced features because WGA identified their systems as illegal copies when they were in fact authentic.
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Black Screen of Death to stop pirates
Noctua
