Windows Genuine Advantage : Rather Annoying

20 Dec 2006

I happened to notice that the Windows Defender on my Windows laptop wanted to update itself. The following is my experience trying to do what should be a simple task in the today’s world of anti-piracy and WGA.

What the hell I figured, this should be a simple download and install (not as simple as an apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade but trivial none the less).

I begin by performing the obligatory click-through on Microsoft’s download site and am immediately presented with a dialog wanting me to download the Windows Genuine Advantage plug-in. WTF?

This machine is genuine so there really isn’t any harm in doing this… just the annoyance. After installing it, I find myself presented with a prompt requiring to download yet another little utility to generate a unique WGA code that will then be inputed on the download page. After finally downloading and running the update executable, it notified me that it was going to (re)verify the genuineness of my system. What was the point of checking prior to downloading if you’re just going to check at installation time (if you’re going to check you might as well check at run time rather than download time).

All this for the privilege of updating my Microsoft software. In all honesty, it feels like a step backwards. I understand the need to combat piracy, but is this really the way to go about it?

caveat – This was the first time I’ve attempted to download a WGA-protected update so it’s possible that subsequent updates won’t be such a hassle.