Windows Genuine Advantage Killed My PC
Unless you actually know a bit about, and are interested in, the inner-workings of a Windows PC then this post will be dull and obscure at best. If, on the other hand, you’ve ever assembled a PC from bare components or have perhaps manually tweaked your registry and had a vague idea of what you were doing at the time, then this post may interest you and will — at the very least — offer the opportunity of a prize.
With regards to getting back to some kind of semi-regular blogging… hopefully that’ll happen soon. I’ve been away, and then I was busy, and even when I’ve been neither; I’ve really not felt like I’ve had much to say. I can’t guarantee any of that will change much, but here’s hoping.
A Prize!
I know. How exciting, eh? A prize! Here’s the run-down; I’ve got an unfathomable Windows problem that’s proved immune to three days of diagnostics and reinstalls. If you can offer a solution that actually works then you shall win either (a) A CD of your choice off amazon [within reason — Tg24, though a groovy choice, would probably be a bit of a cheeky request, even if you do save me the hassle and expense of having to buy a new computer]; OR (b) A double-CD of the finest music ever recorded as compiled by yours truly [a far superior prize I think you’ll agree].
All well and good. But what of the problem? Well, it’s a weird one and no mistake. A long story with more than one red-herring-shaped dead-end…
The problem
It all started a few days ago when I received an email from A. She’s the only person I know who actually uses PGP on a regular basis and as always her email had that familiar chunk of seemingly-random text that is her PGP signature. I don’t use PGP, but I did have it installed and I do have a PGP key (which is now atrociously out-of-date, filled with old email addresses I suspect). I’m a big fan of the idea of routine email encryption, but it’s such a faff and nobody else does it, so I tend not to bother with it.
Nonetheless, it was late and I had some free time, so I downloaded the latest version of the PGP client purely out of curiousity. See what new bells and whistles they’d added. I ran the installer and that’s when the problems began. However, I caution any seeker of the prize that the whole PGP thing is almost certainly a red-herring. It just happened to be what I was doing when the actual fault occurred. See, although I can’t recall for sure, it’s very possible that Windows XP did a scheduled update just prior to all this.
Anyways, Windows just hung during the install for PGP. I could move the mouse cursor around the screen, but clicking things elicited no response. And the keyboard was also unresponsive. Even Ctrl-Alt-Del didn’t work. After waiting a very long time, I hit the reset button on the PC and it rebooted. I decided against trying to reinstall PGP and instead fired up a browser to check something online. I clicked through a couple of pages and suddenly the PC hung again. Exactly the same as before. No response from anything I did, though I could still move the cursor.
And this continued to happen. No matter what I did, after every boot the PC just hung after about 30 seconds. I was furious with PGP (almost certainly unjustifiably). Thankfully I could boot into Safe Mode, so I quickly backed-up all my data (I’ve not lost anything but time to this problem… yet) and spent a while using a different computer to google for solutions to this hypothetical “PGP install bug”. Nothing I did seemed to work and I eventually settled on a Windows reinstall as the least frustrating option.
I’d just backed up everything, so I fired up my Windows XP Original CD (all hologrammed and everything), repartitioned and reformatted my hard-drive and reinstalled Windows. At this point, a quick rundown of my PC:
CPU: AMD 64 3500+
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9 (Chipset: nVidia NFORCE4 Ultra)
RAM: 2 x 1024MB PC3200
GRAPHICS: NVidia GeForce 6800
SOUND: Creative Soundblaster Audigy Platinum
PLUS: 250GB WD hard-drive, NEC CD/DVD burner, Dell 20” widescreen monitor
So yeah, I installed Windows XP Professional on the PC. I then installed a bunch of other stuff (avoiding PGP obviously) but very quickly the same problem occurred, and once again I could only use my PC for 30 or 40 seconds before it became unresponsive. Hell, that’s not even long enough to start up some Adobe software.
This confused me. It meant that clearly PGP had sod all to do with the problem (unless it can cast a malign influence from beyond a reformat). So I resinstalled Windows. Again. And this time in the full knowledge that it would only last a few minutes as I had no idea what stage in the process the problem arose. And this is what happened (note: Between each install I played a hand of Spider Solitaire to check that the system wasn’t hanging)…
Installed:
– Windows XP Professional (from original CD).
– Service Pack 2 (from backup DVD — used it plenty of times before, no reason to suspect it’s a problem).
– Motherboard Drivers (from OEM CD — been fine for years).
– Graphics Drivers (from backup DVD — recently downloaded from nVidia, fine for at least a month)
– Soundcard Drivers (from backup DVD — downloaded from Creative, fine for several months)
Then I activated Windows online which went without a hitch.
No problems so far. I could play Spider Solitaire, fire up Internet Explorer and read the news, and play the sample music in the preinstalled version of Media Player. All hunky-dory. Then however, I found the step that caused the problem…
I connected to Windows Update.
And it broke my computer. First a couple of ActiveX controls got installed, then Microsoft Installer 3.1, an Update for XP (KB898461) and the Windows Genuine Advantage Tool. They downloaded, installed, forced a reboot and suddenly my PC was hanging every 30 seconds once more.
One thing that occurs to me is that the Windows Genuine Advantage Tool might be misidentifying my copy of Windows as being dodgy (despite it being 100% legit). But surely it’d pop up a message letting me know and not just hang the computer within a minute of reboot. Also, I can boot into Safe Mode and it doesn’t hang. Surely if Windows was supposed to be crashing due to some anti-piracy measure gone wrong, then it wouldn’t let me boot into Safe Mode either, right?
So this time I’ve reinstalled Windows, plus SP2 and the various drivers, but have switched off Automatic Updates and am avoiding the Windows Update site / app. I’ve reinstalled Firefox and Thunderbird (plus a bunch of add-ins) and have also installed MS Office 2003 (though obviously haven’t run the updater on that either as it’s all tied into the same Microsoft Update system). All without a hitch.
However, I then downloaded and tried to install Windows Media Player 11. Because I did this using Firefox, it couldn’t force me through the usual Windows Genuine Advantage ActiveX process. Instead it runs through a separate Windows Genuine Advantage process at the beginning of the installation process. When it was doing this though, Windows again hung and became unresponsive. Thankfully this didn’t result in a crash after each reboot, but I’m obviously staying well clear of any attempt by Microsoft to “verify” my copy of Windows. It is a Genuine copy. I paid through the nose for it soon after it was released but it seems like every time I connect to an MS website they try to torpedo my PC.
All of which presents problems… I suspect that not regularly updating Windows and Office with security patches is a recipe for disaster. I’m really not sure what to do about that (and no, I can’t switch to Linux… too much of the software I use is Windows only). Plus I’ve always been a fan of Windows Media Player… an app often overshadowed by its rivals. Now I’ll have to find something else to do the job as any attempt to update or patch Media Player could bugger up my system. Same goes for Outlook.
I don’t know for certain that shoddy Microsoft code (maybe a recent update to the Windows Genuine Advantage Tool clashes with the drivers for the Creative Audigy Platinum or something?) is at the root of this problem. But it’s certainly the most likely culprit. As for how to claim the prize… just let me know what’s going on and how I can sort it out (start patching Windows again and not worry about my PC becoming unusable as a result and requiring a complete rebuild).
Any ideas? Or perhaps just a similar tale of woe?
Crikey. All I can think to say is: try MS support (!); good luck; and I hope your comments here don’t fill up too quickly with Mac/Linux users commenting on the irony of the phrase “Genuine Advantage”.
It’s a bit damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you don’t (as I’m sure has struck you) – either get your system to hang, or leave it potentially unpatched and open to attack. Hope you track the bug(ger) down soon.
I’m counting my blessings. I just had a veritable flood in my room when a blocked gutter in the roof overflowed. I emptied 5+ buckets of water in 15 mins while the storm lasted, and about that much again escaped and flooded into the bedroom of the guy downstairs. Miraculously, it poured down in about the only stretch of my room where there aren’t books, clothes, electrical equipment or my bed. Being squeezed into the living room until it’s repaired isn’t ideal, but at least my books & data are safe… Anyhoo, good luck!
June 21st, 2007 | 1:34am
by Gyrus
Hmm, nasty. To be honest, and I may be way off the mark here Jim, it sounds more like a hardware problem to me. Have you checked the CPU core temperature? It should be no more than 66C for a AMD 64 3500+. I’ve not heard of Windows auto-update causing the issues you describe, even when run on dodgy installations. If I remember correctly Microsoft just won’t update a version of Windows they consider non-authentic. They still allow the user’s PC to function. Not surprising really as the authentication process is known to be far from flawless.
June 21st, 2007 | 2:01pm
by Dave
Hey Dave, nope it’s not the CPU temperature (chugging along nicely in the 39-44deg range — probably should have mentioned that). Bear in mind that the PC is working fine right now — but will die the moment I connect to MS-Update or try to install Media Player 11. The one common element (that I can think of) between both is the Windows Genuine Advantage Tool. I just can’t see a hardware fault manifesting this way.
We’ve had pretty much non-stop rain here for a few days too, Gyrus. No flooding (yet) thankfully. Glad to hear your disaster didn’t result in too much hassle.
June 21st, 2007 | 2:26pm
by Jim Bliss
I’ve had two similar things happen to two different computers. The first one was some sort of dodgy driver installed by one of many CD burning programs I was testing at the time which made my computer freeze up like yours whenever I inserted a DVD and the system tried to autoplay it – that I fixed – in the end – by turning off autoplay.
The other happened on this, my new computer, a few weeks ago after a Windows update which suddenly seemingly decided to take offence at an out-of-date CD-RW (again) driver – I removed that driver and all has been well (for Windows definitions of well) since.
So, I would – tentatively – suggest that it could be a driver conflict caused by a specific Windows ‘update’ in the Advantage Tool, and probably a driver that is in use fairly constantly like a graphic driver or somesuch. Trouble is finding out which one – if it is that – is going to be a bit of a bugger.
Or your motherboard could be dying slowly. I’ve had that too.
June 21st, 2007 | 3:46pm
by David Hadley
As a total technical spacktard, I don’t have a clue. But I did recently buy a new and rather wonderful PC with similar specs to yours from a man down the road who builds them himself. His parting advice to me as I took his masterpiece home, was to turn off and leave off Windows Automatic update, cos if he had a penny for every time MS had melted someone’s computer…
June 22nd, 2007 | 9:38am
by Larry Teabag
Sounds like a chipset overheat. Had the same *freeze* behaviour. The reason safe mode is ok is that the advanced motherboard drivers aren’t used and the hence the load on the chipset is minimal. As soon as it uses graphics card (obviously not happening in safe mode) in any meaningfull way it will start putting load on the chip and heat it up.
My bet is that the chip fan is slowing down enough to let it overheat. Sometimes you can clean the fan enough to fix it but i’ve had to replace them, which did work.
Good luck.
June 22nd, 2007 | 12:12pm
by Matt Gahan
Again, I cannot offer too much advice here. But I’d be wary of Larry Teabag’s advice: Windows is full of bugs and security holes! This is not, perhaps, just Microsoft’s problem: I’m sure other operating systems have problems too, but as nearly everyone runs Windows, it makes a massive target for hackers. The only way to get updates (although please correct me here if I’m wrong) is to run Windows Update. Perhaps you should just turn it off automatic, and make sure you do a proper backup before manually running it every couple of weeks. But I really wouldn’t leave a non-updated copy of Windows on a machine which was connected to the internet.
Well, one bit of advice. I’m with Jim, in that I doubt it’s a hardware problem. I’ve had various things (mainly hard-drives) fail on me, and they are certainly not picky about what software you happen to be running. I had a look on the Microsoft Website, but no luck. David Hadley idea is intriguing. If you have a lot of time, what about removing various bits of hardware (always start with the sound card, in my experience) and try the whole reinstall process again? Have you recently installed new drivers for something (by “recently” I mean, since the last time you ran Windows Genuine Advantage?)
June 22nd, 2007 | 2:34pm
by Doormat
By the way: I think “Windows Genuine Advantage” is different from the Automatic Update thingy, yes? I run the update thing regularly, but it’s been a while since I had to run the Genuine Advantage tool. I think Microsoft only makes you run that for big updates, or installing new tools (like their spyware removal thingy, and maybe Media player). I _think_ that the Genuine Advantage tool will check what hardware you have, and compare this to the stored information it has about your copy of Windows (as this is, again I _think_, how the activation process works). So it is reasonable to assume it will request odd bits of data from various hardware drivers which other applications won’t usually, and thus this might be causing Jim’s problems.
June 22nd, 2007 | 2:38pm
by Doormat
It’s hard to say offhand as there could be a thousand reasons for this. IME this is probably caused by a driver issue (either existing, or to be updated by Windows update). Right click My Computer->Properties->Hardware Tab->Device Manager should be able to tell you at a glance if anything obvious is in conflict.
You could do worse to look in Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Event Viewer – some information may be logged therein that could be another starting point.
If windows is creating a core dump, here is a simple tutorial to get you started in the wonderful world of windows debugging: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/041105-windows-crash.html
hth.
June 24th, 2007 | 8:48am
by countd
i can’t help with *any* of the computer stuff (my advice is normally ‘hit it. hard.’)
but it’s nice to see that you’re still alive an’ all that.
x
June 27th, 2007 | 9:28am
by zoe
Well, I took the plunge a couple of days ago and reconnected to MS-Update in the hope that they’d sorted out the problem. And once again it fried my PC. Thanks for all of the suggestions, folks, but there’s little doubt that something about the Windows Genuine Advantage tool — despite having run it dozens of times in the past — is doing something very nasty to my PC. I discovered an article that may shed some light on the problem. It includes:
I think I’ll wait until July before trying to reconnect to the Update site.
June 27th, 2007 | 2:53pm
by Jim Bliss
Try removing all the Nvidia drivers within Safe Mode and then download and use the latest version from the Nvidia website. We had a similar issue with WGA this time last year which turned out to be a conflict with the Nvidia graphics drivers. Updating them cured the issue.
July 2nd, 2007 | 10:28am
by Johnny Nefarious
Thanks for the advice, Johnny. But I’ve been through that process already to no avail. The problem happens with both the old drivers (graphics and sound) — and by “old” I’m actually only talking about a 5 month-old backup — and the latest ones.
July 2nd, 2007 | 10:45am
by Jim Bliss
Hello Jim.
The very same thing occured to me too.
One day I was surfing the net when computer started to halt. The windows did not
respond nor the mouse clicks. When I moved the cursor around it was actually moving but when I tried clicking it a few times the cursor froze.
“OK then, I’ll give it another shot” I rebooted my PC and had another go. Windows was starting and then after about a minute and a half it froze again leaving me wondering “WHY?! WHY?!…”. I thought it was some kind of virus so I scanned with Norton but it gave nothing. I tried asking a friend of mine how to rescue my system and he told me getting to SAFE MODE (by hitting F5 when the computer starts) and from there use the System Restore tool. I did it and it seemed like my computer was fine then. But this time after a longer period of time the computer froze again. At that stage I got really upset and all I could was to format my computer… and so I did.
After formating my computer I installed again a clean, GENUINE, copy of Windows and tryed update my computer through microsft’s website but it always wrote that my copy of Windows is not genuine but it IS! couple of minutes later and my computer again was dying.
I restored my computer again to an earlier date (lucky I made a restore point before I had tried to update) and tried through Automatic Updates but it seems every time Windows facing the WGA tool it freezes.
So now I reboot and don’t update my computer. I installed SP2 that does not need any genuine verfication and it’s fine.
The bottom line is that Microsoft trying a new method of keeping pirated versions of windows out of use. It’s called the Genuine Virus, and the only ones who get effected in the end are their genuine users =[
July 29th, 2007 | 9:02pm
by Matt
Hi there,
I’ve had exactly the same problem on two machines out of the many I use at work. Both have that same Gigabyte motherboard. One with XP the other with Server 2003. Genuine. Freshly installed with the drivers from Gigabyte’s CD. When starting Windows/Microsoft update and having installed the software, everything freezes, indeed. Sure, there’s something wrong at MS’s side!
October 25th, 2007 | 11:23am
by Guy Kerckhoven
Set automatic updates to notify you but not to download or install the updates. That way you can choose what updates to install. Don’t install WGA and check the box that says don’t ask me again to install this.(or something like that) Only install critical updates. Set a restore point before updating so you can return it to a previous config if needed. Get a HD clone tool and have a ready to go good HD with a good copy of Win.
As someone else said here. This WGA is nothing but a trojan created by M$ to harass the genuine users.
PS. My copy of XP was certified as genuine but my computer went from starting up and being useable in under 2 minutes to now taking over 4 minutes. I have removed and disabled WGA and will never allow it back onto my computer. This has not fixed the slow boot up. It runs fine once booted.
January 7th, 2009 | 1:09pm
by Steve
Hey folks:
I am in a big predicament.
If windows genuine advantage was accidentaly installed on a computer with, let’s say, without a genuine copy of windows, what is a person to do?
I have a file called killWGA which should help the problem, but because WGA is installed it won’t even let me boot into safe mode, or open any file off a cd and view it.
Short of reformatting, does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this problem?
Millions of thanks,
J.
March 8th, 2009 | 9:02pm
by Joanne