System Restore 1839

I'm aware of all that except the no information by phone part. Still, it seems asinine for them to let activations time out. But, as we all know, that doesn't keep companies from doing things very often. You learn somethin new everyday and this is good to know. As for phone calls, my last call to MS (though not to deactivate a key call had been transferred to the licensing information department) went like this:

1) Thank you for calling MS, may I have your name please? . . . (typing noises) provide us with today? . . . (you guessed it; more typing noises even though I said no) 4) Great! How can I help you today? . . .

It's certainly possible that they don't ask that if you are transferred to the Windows XP activation department, I've never needed to call them. I will say to their complement, the call was answered by a real human within less than two minutes of dialing the number.

By the way, it does appear that the next move in Genuine Advantage is designed to frustrate *some* pirates into buying a copy. It's been released as a critical update so people with automatic updates turned on get it automatically, cannot be uninstalled (at least not with the normal uninstaller) and throws up a balloon every few minutes telling you your XP copy is not genuine.

-Mike