Microsoft has revealed that it plans to change its antipiracy measures in Windows XP to respond to the beta testers' concerns of that XP's product activation system wasn't tolerant enough of typical ...

A German copy-protection company has published details of Microsoft's technology for preventing casual copying of Windows XP but concluded the technology allows for reasonable upgrades and doesn't ...

Dave Plummer, a veteran Microsoft developer who contributed to the creation of Task Manager, ZIP folders, and Windows Product ...

Microsoft Corp. will change how users activate Windows XP when Service Pack 3 launches in the first half of 2008, a company white paper said. New installations of Windows XP SP3 will give users the ...

Windows Product Activation, aka. WPA, will be integrated into all versions of Windows XP (the next version of Windows 2000), save DataCenter and volume-based licensed materials (e.g., for licensing ...

David William Plummer began his career at Microsoft as an intern on the MS-DOS team and was later offered a full-time ...

The method used to activate Windows for single-user licenses starting with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Bulk licenses to companies do not contain Windows Product Activation (WPA). When Windows ...

A young Bill Gates once complained about the copying of his company's Altair Basic software by computer hobbyists. This rampant theft, according to Gates, made all the hard work done by him and his ...

A security hole in servers run by Conxion, Microsoft's Web hosting partner, allowed people to download a testing version of Windows XP without paying for it for the second time in two weeks. The ...

Product activation and validation in Windows 7 is built off the same Software Protection Platform that was introduced with Windows Vista. Microsoft claims the technology is much better than the one in ...

Let's make sure we've got this straight: Microsoft is asking you to activate your software before you can use it. You're not required to pass on any personal information (though given past episodes, ...

Ever since Microsoft introduced its anti-piracy activation scheme with Windows XP all those years ago, it has been a thorn in the side of hardware enthusiasts. To put it simply, Microsoft’s Windows ...