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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.

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13 comment(s) for this post.

  1. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 4:41 pm, victor Said:

    Will it apply to all products?

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  2. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 5:08 pm, Galvatron Said:

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

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  3. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 5:19 pm, test5477 Said:

    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?

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  4. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 5:46 pm, Matt Said:

    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.

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  5. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 5:59 pm, Pat torney Said:

    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.”

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  6. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 8:02 pm, TJHood Said:

    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.

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  7. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 8:19 pm, hill Said:

    Exit stage left msft. Hello osx and linux.

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  8. On Sep 11, 2007 @ 10:17 pm, Jeff B. Said:

    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”

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  9. On Sep 12, 2007 @ 12:00 am, bbcurve8300 Said:

    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

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  10. On Sep 12, 2007 @ 11:43 am, Jason Said:

    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…

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  11. On Sep 12, 2007 @ 12:31 pm, JJLO Said:

    @ test5477

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

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  12. On Sep 19, 2007 @ 3:18 pm, BSOD Said:

    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 ?!

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  13. On May 25, 2008 @ 10:48 am, erfe Said:

    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!

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