Another horror from Microsoft

[glaston]

Funny, I've had precisely the opposite thing happen. Any time I've tried installing Windows on a Dell PC using Dell's system restore discs I've had no issues whatsoever and never had to activate the system at all, much less call Microsoft.

I don't care to get into this debate really.
I just want to add that this has been my experience with Dell restore discs also.
Never had a problem, and never had to do an activation.

I only saw the windows genuine advantage message about a computer needing to be activated or not running a legitamate copy of windows once.
And I seem to remmber that it shouldn't have been happening, the copy of windows was legit and activated and the user very annoyed.

Forum rules at this other forum dictate that I can't tell her to disable Automatic Updater to fix her problem, because the moderators will moderate me profusely.

That doesn't sound right.
What would be the problem with telling her that?
The mods don't want to have to take the chance of incurring the wrath of MS and their totalitarian regime?

After purchasing the old original Kerio firewall I discovered that almost every program in my xp operating system " phoned home " to microsoft or to hp. Click a game or print, everything from the startup to the shutdown attempted to send a signal out of my pc onto the internet.

The Kerio firewall was so effective at stopping these " phone home " signals that Microsoft bought Kerio and changed its firewall setting so that microsoft could get in and out without being detected.

That's just scary and frustrating to me.

When you do a standard port scan of a windows machine you get some disturbing results.

Open TCP Port: 135 epmap
Open TCP Port: 139 netbios-ssn
Open TCP Port: 445 microsoft-ds
Open TCP Port: 1025 blackjack
Open TCP Port: 3389 ms-wbt-server
Open TCP Port: 5000 commplex-main

That's a default windowsxp installation!
The only one that I opened specifically is port-3389(terminal server AKA-remote desktop).

[rokytnji]

That doesn't sound right.
What would be the problem with telling her that?
The mods don't want to have to take the chance of incurring the wrath of MS and their totalitarian regime?.

I don't know. Forum rules. It is what it is,

[Bemk]

I don't care that Microsoft acts against piracy. I do care about how they do it. If they're writing their applications to send data about the system and about it being genuine they're actually spying.

I don't really care if I have to spend some money on a good product, but if the product costs more than it's worth I want my money back. One of the things which make a product a worth less to me is if it's designed not to respect my rights. I already knew Microsoft was being close to the edge but now they've gone over it. I'm definitely going to dig in to our Dutch rights to get our money back that we spend on a OEM system which we don't use, I'm not sure, but I think that when you're capable of proving that you're not using a service you're forced to pay for you could actually get your money back.

I'm not really sure this is possible, but I think in the Netherlands we're able to do this.