Vista Genuine Advantage Kill Switch
Microsoft plans to eliminate the most controversial of its Windows Vista anti-piracy features in the OS’s upcoming Service Pack update.
The company now plans to ax Vista’s “kill switch”, which disables features of the operating system when it appears to be counterfeit.
“Although our overall strategy remains the same, with SP1 we’re adjusting the customer experience that differentiates genuine from non-genuine systems in Windows Vista and later in Windows Server,” Mike Sievert, Microsoft’s vice president of Windows product marketing, said in a statement.
The current release of Vista includes Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) anti-piracy features that disable aspects of the operating system should a user fail to provide a “genuine” keycode. Following a grace period, portions of the OS remain disabled until the user provides a code that can be verified by WGA.