Black screen of Darkness for Vista Pirates

Everyone knows what the Microsoft "Blue Screen of Death" means, but how about the Vista "Black Screen of Darkness?" In an email titled:  "Pirated Vista — A darkness descends!", Microsoft makes it quite clear to resellers what can be expected when people install pirated versions of their Vista operating system. After one hour of browsing, the screen will go black, no start menu, and no toolbar. Along with the email came a new ad campaign for Microsoft resellers advocating "Don’t let this happen to your customers," informing them that non genuine copies of Windows Vista will lose access to key features, have limited access to updates, and thus risk attack from viruses, malware and spyware. For those of you who may be using a "pirated" version of Vista, beware, this is a feature that has only recently been activated. Although, tomorrow, I’m sure we will be hearing of ways to get around this.

Read

13 Responses to “Black screen of Darkness for Vista Pirates”

  1. 1
    victor says:

    Will it apply to all products?

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  2. 2
    Galvatron says:

    Good question? Office 2k7 buy may mach dual boots vista an linux

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  3. 3
    test5477 says:

    what?

    Gal, D- for Spelling and F for content as I have no idea what you are saying. -You may need to dual boot in order to use Office 2k7?

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  4. 4
    Matt says:

    We heard about this at the Microsoft/AMD Tech Tour and they are getting pretty serious about this.

    But it will keep the pirates away, for a bit.

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  5. 5
    Pat torney says:

    This from the company that just got away with major patent infringement by sending a master disc containing infringing software overseas instead of producing the consumer products here in the U.S.

    I guess anyone who gets caught can just say, “I learned it from watching you.”

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  6. 6
    TJHood says:

    So much energy spent on keeping people from using there products when they should work on making them worthy of using in the first place. They crash enough unintentionally without this feature.

    but hey why complain if you don’t have a solution.. oh wait I do.. thats why I use Ubuntu Linux which is completely free and runs great.

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  7. 7
    hill says:

    Exit stage left msft. Hello osx and linux.

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  8. 8
    Jeff B. says:

    Ya know, Blue Screen of Death just sounds better and, although infuriating, it looks like it would be better to look at than the “black screen of death”

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  9. 9
    bbcurve8300 says:

    hahaha!! they have been trying to implement a process since XP started and all were epic failures, this will be as well, if any thing it just means that MORE legitimate users will get reduced functionality due too crappy verification methods, in turn pissing those users off and turning them on to other OS’s..Go Microsoft!!..remember folks even ubuntu can pass the WGA tests

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  10. 10
    Jason says:

    Wired has confirmed that this “email” is indeed a hoax and that MS has not changed any of the AntiPiracy features of Vista. The Reduced Functionality Mode is as it has always been. See here –> “http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925582″ .Lets try not to spread the FUD guys…

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  11. 11
    JJLO says:

    @ test5477

    I laugh every time I read your post! Great post!

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  12. 12
    BSOD says:

    Really funny, black sreen of darkness, humm until now, i got black gadgets of buggy vista OS on my desktop despite the fact that i run a licensed copy of vista, strange ?!

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  13. 13
    erfe says:

    well you dont need serials now theres pre-activate dverison of vista available!!!
    no keys are needed and if any uptade does break this activation you cna use a toll called vistaloder to re-create it!

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

Leave a Reply