Lols Vista For Everyone

Post by **Nellyboy** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:35 pm

"Pirates have succeeded in making cracking, rather than simply circumventing, Windows Vista product activation easier than ever before.

A crack from pirate group Pantheon allows pirated Vista installations to be activated and made fully operational. The approach avoids reliance on beta activation or time stamp hacks, instead concentrating on flaws in the volume activation process. The approach itself isn't new but its been dumbed down with a DIY kit that makes the process a lot easier.

Pantheon's approach piggybacks on the volume license activation process used by Redmond's tier-one OEMs such as HP, Dell, and ASUS. In order to minimise support calls (and user inconvenience), Microsoft allows preferred partners to pre-install versions of Vista that don't require activation.

This System-Locked Pre-Installation 2.0 scheme allows OEMs to embed specific licensing information into the OS so the product can be activated without been verified by Microsoft.

Pirates have come up with a software bundle that includes certificate files from ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo along with OEM product keys for Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate. It also comes with a BIOS driver that allows certificate information from (for example) HP to be installed on any suitably powerful machine, regardless of manufacturer.

Australia's APC magazine reports that the crack works, allowing machines running pirated copies of Vista to pass Windows Genuine Advantage checks. As APC notes, the hack makes a mockery of the volume activation process as well as posing huge difficulties for Microsoft in thwarting the attack."

Taken from theregister article.

Post by **ryanside** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:40 pm

sweeeeeet

Tue Mar 04, 2008 7:15 pm

Been running this for ages

And I mean since I installed Vista back middle of last year

Post by **madman045** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 7:22 pm

Have you read the release notes for SP1 yet?

It has been fixed to remove the OEM bios patch flaw....

Post by **Trig** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 7:48 pm

Still waiting for MS to sort Vista tbh...

Post by **Hammer** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 5:28 am

Still on XP32 here, plays COD4 fine so I'm happy.

Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:40 am

Madman045 wrote: Have you read the release notes for SP1 yet?

It has been fixed to remove the OEM bios patch flaw....

Haven't installed SP1 yet, got it setup so I can but wondered if it would fubar my install hehe will have to go find a SP1 fixed version.

This is the insertion of the Dell/Asus/Lenovo SLIC into the bios and running a bios driver to auth your Vista yeah. Got any links to information on it Mad?

Post by **Thane** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:24 pm

I gave Vista a 6 month go. Found it degraded faster then XP along with driver issues etc. Just installed XP and the difference going back is very noticeable, won't be installing Vista without a damn good reason.

Post by **Trig** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 8:00 am

Got Vista32U on my work laptop dual booting with XP.
Home laptop is Vista32U (altho seeing as its the same one thats on my work laptop that might have to change back to XP which seeing as the missus uses it she wont mind anyways as shes not a Vista fan)
Work PC is XP
Home PC is XP

Post by **madman045** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:48 pm

Myo, do you have KB940510 installed at the mo?

Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:04 pm

No m8e doesn't seem that I do