Another WGA failure

On July 18, Microsoft's WGA team promised to send me a disk with a product key from their blocked list. It was supposed to arrive via overnight service, but it was never sent. After several follow-up messages, I was assured on July 26 I would have something by the end of that week. The package finally arrived the next week, on August 1. It contained a CD-R with a handwritten label that read "Windows XP SP2 – VLK," and a 25-character product key on a small slip of paper.

Over the weekend, I hoisted the Jolly Roger, cleared a partition on a test machine, slid the CD into the drive, and prepared to join the ranks of Windows pirates. Unfortunately, the product key that Microsoft had sent me didn’t work.

No problem, I thought. I'll just do what any red-blooded pirate would do and Google for a working product key. It took me about 15 minutes to find a web page containing five volume license keys that had reportedly been posted on September 9 2004.

My bootleg key worked perfectly. I went back to Windows Update and downloaded a series of Optional Updates and drivers that are only available to Genuine Windows users. I went over to the Internet Explorer homepage and downloaded the latest beta of IE7, passing a validation test twice – once on the download and again on the installation. And five minutes ago I went over to the Windows Defender page – this is another free utility that's only available to Genuine Windows users – and the validation check waved me right through.

They haven't managed to identify a stolen product key that's been floating around the Internet for nearly two years. I'm reluctantly running a pirated version of Windows and can't get caught no matter how hard I try.