News from PANUG/BizNix - October 4, 2002
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org

SURVEY

PANUG would like to know approximately how much time is
spent on licensing-related activities in your company by
you and others. This includes the time it takes to order,
install, store, and keep track of licenses. It includes
the time to find CD-ROMs so you can get the CDROM key
when installing software as well as the time to install
Service Packs that are needed for licensing-related
problems.

Please try to quantify this in terms of hours per week.
If you can't, give us any information and we'll try to
factor it in. You can respond by replying to this message.
We'll publish the results in a future broadcast.


ACTIVATION CHANGES IN SERVICE PACK 1

Kevin Hawkins submitted this article that appeared on
Tech Republic:

Microsoft made several changes in the activation process
with Service Pack 1 for Windows XP. Here's a look at a few
of the changes:

*There's a three-day grace period for reactivation.

*During Windows XP setup, the system checks the product key.
 If the key is on the known pirated product key list,
 installation fails. The following two product IDs
 automatically fail during setup:

 1. XXXXX-640-0000356-23XXX
 2. XXXXX-640-2001765-23XXX

*The product key that's used to install Windows XP will be
 included in the Installation ID, which is required during
 the activation process.

*Windows Update checks a list of valid product keys before
 installing updates, which helps prevent the installation of
 updates on cracked and pirated versions of Windows XP.

*You can encrypt the volume license key (VLK) in an unattended
 setup file. This prevents users from getting and distributing
 a key that doesn't belong to them.

*Service Pack 1 also contains fixes for known holes that
 bypass product activation.