And this is why people hate Microsoft

[Russ Smith]

user at work suddenly has a your copy of Windows is not genuine message. He finds the product code and enters it to validate, and it doesn't work. He contacts me and I've now spent 5 hours over 3 days working on it.

The culmination today was an over 1 hour call with MS where I spoke to both india and the Philippines. They all admit the copy of Win 7 pro is genuine(Bought installed from Dell) and the Anytime Upgrade to Ultimate is genuine. But they are unable to convince the computer that is the case, she took over remotely and 30 minutes later declared she could not do it.

She then said "you'll need to buy a copy of 8.1 and upgrade." Not we'll give you a new Ultimate Product code so you can use that, or we'll give you 8.1, but you have to buy it. Why would I have to pay money for a faulty Windows Update that caused this? Why would I buy 8.1 when 10 is coming in a couple of months? When I pointed this out, she put me on hold, and then hung up on me and disconnected from the computer!

Apparently the only alternative is to downgrade to Pro, enter the valid code, activate it, and then upgrade again to Ultimate. But I can't for the life of me get anybody to tell me HOW to downgrade? One person, at MS, suggested I use Windows Downgrader, which is a 3rd party program.

At this point I'm stuck, if a Windows expert at MS can't get the valid code to activate what am I supposed to do that doesn't involve a clean install. I don't want 8.1 I'd rather wait for 10 to be honest.

 

[Covert Rain]

Damn we don't deal with any of that kind of stuff. We actually have assigned MS reps that handle weird or odd situations for us. It includes a rep and some technical guys. I think that's different than dealing with a phone rep. Then again, we also negotiate a multimillion dollar support contract with them each year so they are very motivated to make us happy.

I agree with you though. Windows 10 is coming and it's supposed to be a much better O/S. Our software engineers are playing with it now to see what we need to do to support an Enterprise wide roll out. However, all the buzz I am hearing from them is that it's probably the best since XP rolled out.

 

[Chaz]

Can you roll back the registry to correct this?

That sucks though. At this point it sounds like a reinstall would have been faster.

 

[Russ Smith]

Can you roll back the registry to correct this?

That sucks though. At this point it sounds like a reinstall would have been faster.

would have been. She messed with the registry when she was trying to activate the code but I don't know exactly what she did.

I was going to try and do a system restore to before this happened to see if that fixes it but we're leery of that.

I did find an Infoworld story from Dec 2014 where MS had released a Windows update that caused this on thousands of computers, legit copies were decelared not legit. People were reinstalling or in some cases buying new copies of windows, entering the code, and then still being told it wasn't valid.

MS told people to uninstall the update, but it wasn't listed in the installed updates. 2 days later they released a fix. So I even downloaded that and tried to run it 5 times but it didn't seem to do anything.

If we're going to have to reinstall we'd rather go Win 7 pro to Ultimate again using the same codes, or wait for Win 10 to come out.

The good news is after that mess I went into an interview as we're finally going to hire a full time IT person to take some of this off my hands!

 

[Covert Rain]

If we're going to have to reinstall we'd rather go Win 7 pro to Ultimate again using the same codes, or wait for Win 10 to come out.

That's smart. I wouldn't touch 8.1. We played with it and there are so many issues I don't even know where to start.

 

[Russ Smith]

That's smart. I wouldn't touch 8.1. We played with it and there are so many issues I don't even know where to start.

We have about 3 computers with it. Not really problematic so far, very fast, but a pain to install and use at first because you have to find everything.

Much prefer waiting for 10 though.

What I'm assuming or hoping is that just like December, this is a bad update and they will eventually release a fix. But, the kicker, in December, many of the people who needed the fix, could not get it. Why? Because non genuine copies of windows can't get all the Windows updates, just the critical ones. and apparently MS had this fix in the non critical list so the very people who needed it, couldn't get it automatically. They had to call MS and have them install it remotely!

 

[Covert Rain]

We have about 3 computers with it. Not really problematic so far, very fast, but a pain to install and use at first because you have to find everything.

Much prefer waiting for 10 though.

What I'm assuming or hoping is that just like December, this is a bad update and they will eventually release a fix. But, the kicker, in December, many of the people who needed the fix, could not get it. Why? Because non genuine copies of windows can't get all the Windows updates, just the critical ones. and apparently MS had this fix in the non critical list so the very people who needed it, couldn't get it automatically. They had to call MS and have them install it remotely!

Windows 8.1 did nothing to improve scalability in our environment. All while requiring users to use an entirely new interface. We did a few tests and witnessed productivity drop significantly in some instances.

In previous version of Windows, MS made it easy to do incremental roll outs which was much more difficult this time around. It's hard to get people to bite who just upgraded to Windows 7 in mass without a compelling reason.

Also, the enterprise patch schedule for 8.1 was ridiculous and not even realistic that larger companies could react that quickly.

 

[Russ Smith]

Windows 8.1 did nothing to improve scalability in our environment. All while requiring users to use an entirely new interface. We did a few tests and witnessed productivity drop significantly in some instances.

In previous version of Windows, MS made it easy to do incremental roll outs which was much more difficult this time around. It's hard to get people to bite who just upgraded to Windows 7 in mass without a compelling reason.

Also, the enterprise patch schedule for 8.1 was ridiculous and not even realistic that larger companies could react that quickly.

Oh I can believe the productivity thing. I just gave our Accounting manager a new system yesterday with 8.1. She was at my desk 6 times in the first 4 hours asking where is this, where is that.

 

[Covert Rain]

Oh I can believe the productivity thing. I just gave our Accounting manager a new system yesterday with 8.1. She was at my desk 6 times in the first 4 hours asking where is this, where is that.

LOL. That is exactly what was going on during our tests.