Microsoft piracy pop-up is persistent

Big Vole is watching you
UK Inquirer
Apr. 27, 2006

MICROSOFT HAS BEEN quietly piloting its Software Genuine Advantage programme in Norway and in Sweden since November.

This week, the scheme has been be extended to the United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.

Details of the scheme have been available for some while on this page here, where we found the text of the message you can expect to see on your screen should you be considered a pirate:

"It appears that you could be a victim of software piracy. The copy of Windows installed on this computer is not considered to be genuine by Microsoft.

The notification will continue to display until your computer is running genuine Microsoft Windows."

Microsoft says that every time a notification is displayed, the user will receive detailed information about the specific validation failure. The information includes steps that can be taken to resolve the problem.

These don't seem to include, "try Linux instead".

We'll be interested to hear how you get on..