Petetech888
New Member
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- Location
- Christchurch NZ
Don't know if this belongs here or in the gripe section but here goes.
On more than one occasion customers who have taken home a freshly installed operating system on their old systems have rung me and said their system returned an Invalid Product Key message when they updated. This is after their system has been at my workshop, been updated and patched more than once on average (always after a new installation).
I told them to ring Microsoft as sometimes bugs or glitches cause these errors and although regrettable it can happen.
I tell them to put in a call to Microsoft who will remedy the situation over the phone. (I do not ethically consider it my responsibility but will talk them through the process).
That was fine, those I told had called back and said that their system was now working and Microsoft had talked them through a phone activation.
This became a random event which began happening every few weeks and I would direct the customer back to MS help and the issue would be remedied.
But wait..... IT HAPPENS YET AGAIN!!!.
On the week it happened twice in two days and after extensive googling to ascertain if this was a new problem with anti-piracy updates screwing up the process I had had enough and rang Microsoft support myself.
I rang the free 0800 number which here in New Zealand forwards us to Taiwan (which most of our national call centres are farmed out to) I think.... where they told me I had to get the customer to call them. I told them I did but I would like a fix or solution if it was available. (I know that's complete wishful thinking for many reasons).
After speaking to a "Technical Support Person" I was told they could not explain it. They asked me to get the customer to call them. I told them I already do so and asked if they could tell me why this is happening when the issue repeated with XP - Vista and Windows 7 installations, that had no common links (whether it was a new Retail/OEM re-installations/no rhyme nor reason to it) except my workshops IP address after the first activation and update after clean installations. Nope, no idea, but I should get the customer to call them.... OK.
One more time it happens on a Monday. So... I called again.
To my dismay the conversation began to decline when I struck a help desk worker who was slightly arrogant and seemed to be reading off of cue cards with very little understanding of English, or our New Zealand dialect which may have been hard for him to understand as it is kind of twangy English??
Needless to say this overworked and highly stressed technician with the patience and tolerance level of a Zen monk
kind of lost control of the verbal restraint a little. I am not proud of what I said and I did not use profanity, but I was a little hard on this (complete insult to clueless imbeciles) person maybe? 
I hung up the phone highly frustrated and even less informed than I was before I rang. After a few choice mumbles under my breath and some very well crafted expletives I forgot the matter up until a few weeks ago when it began to happen again, this time while I was updating two new installations, a fresh install on a kit-set PC using a retail version of Windows 7 Home Premium and an older Vista Home Premium on a Compaq CQ60 notebook using a Vista OEM disk.
This time I rang Microsoft and recorded the phone call (I informed them that they were being recorded for legal purposes) and after being put on hold for over 30 minutes I reached a technician who told me that they did not know what had happened and gave me no resolution nor reason but did give me an incident number. Oh Joy!!
A few days ago I was updating a laptop running Vista Home Premium using the system recovery option built in to it.
While still connected to the windows update site and after the usual restart I was faced with the log-on screen.
I entered the password... and was to my surprise locked out the machine. There was after a short time nothing present except a link to validate the OS as it was not a valid OS
???.
Normally I would bypass this using the "whatsit" for disabled thing (those who know what I mean know what I mean, so as not to give info to those who may be unethical) and get rid of it and maybe reinstall which may have sorted it out.
But I decided to ring my friendly Microsoft team and see what they had to say. Again
I informed them that they were being recorded for legal purposes (which turns a pain in the butt call into a slightly amusing enterprise) and they told me I had to use or buy a Vista Operating system disk and technical support would talk me through the problem (the help desk operator admitted to fix an issue they are aware of The first MS person to do so.).
Now if I did not have a Vista retail disk and if I was a normal home user that would be almost the cost of buying a new laptop.
My gripe is because of their over zealous anti-piracy software included in the new MS update packages or some other more sinister conspiracy theory reasoning they have again made performing a normal task into a time consuming waste of both time and money.
Note: I do not use pirated software but have had the occasional client whose OS and/or software is hacked (they deny all knowledge of course because it was the son or brother or uncle Ted, or it was on it when they brought it out of the newspaper etc ). So the other thought was that when pirated software is reported via MS update, does MS track that IP address and send their little gremlins to take a peek and screw with the normal processes (I have my own IP Address).
If so this is kind of illegal.
I am only guessing, but after this has happened so many times it make me wonder.
Has anyone else come across this or similar at all?
On more than one occasion customers who have taken home a freshly installed operating system on their old systems have rung me and said their system returned an Invalid Product Key message when they updated. This is after their system has been at my workshop, been updated and patched more than once on average (always after a new installation).
I told them to ring Microsoft as sometimes bugs or glitches cause these errors and although regrettable it can happen.
I tell them to put in a call to Microsoft who will remedy the situation over the phone. (I do not ethically consider it my responsibility but will talk them through the process).
That was fine, those I told had called back and said that their system was now working and Microsoft had talked them through a phone activation.
This became a random event which began happening every few weeks and I would direct the customer back to MS help and the issue would be remedied.
But wait..... IT HAPPENS YET AGAIN!!!.
On the week it happened twice in two days and after extensive googling to ascertain if this was a new problem with anti-piracy updates screwing up the process I had had enough and rang Microsoft support myself.
I rang the free 0800 number which here in New Zealand forwards us to Taiwan (which most of our national call centres are farmed out to) I think.... where they told me I had to get the customer to call them. I told them I did but I would like a fix or solution if it was available. (I know that's complete wishful thinking for many reasons).
After speaking to a "Technical Support Person" I was told they could not explain it. They asked me to get the customer to call them. I told them I already do so and asked if they could tell me why this is happening when the issue repeated with XP - Vista and Windows 7 installations, that had no common links (whether it was a new Retail/OEM re-installations/no rhyme nor reason to it) except my workshops IP address after the first activation and update after clean installations. Nope, no idea, but I should get the customer to call them.... OK.
One more time it happens on a Monday. So... I called again.
To my dismay the conversation began to decline when I struck a help desk worker who was slightly arrogant and seemed to be reading off of cue cards with very little understanding of English, or our New Zealand dialect which may have been hard for him to understand as it is kind of twangy English??
Needless to say this overworked and highly stressed technician with the patience and tolerance level of a Zen monk
kind of lost control of the verbal restraint a little. I am not proud of what I said and I did not use profanity, but I was a little hard on this (complete insult to clueless imbeciles) person maybe? I hung up the phone highly frustrated and even less informed than I was before I rang. After a few choice mumbles under my breath and some very well crafted expletives I forgot the matter up until a few weeks ago when it began to happen again, this time while I was updating two new installations, a fresh install on a kit-set PC using a retail version of Windows 7 Home Premium and an older Vista Home Premium on a Compaq CQ60 notebook using a Vista OEM disk.
This time I rang Microsoft and recorded the phone call (I informed them that they were being recorded for legal purposes) and after being put on hold for over 30 minutes I reached a technician who told me that they did not know what had happened and gave me no resolution nor reason but did give me an incident number.
Oh Joy!!A few days ago I was updating a laptop running Vista Home Premium using the system recovery option built in to it.
While still connected to the windows update site and after the usual restart I was faced with the log-on screen.
I entered the password... and was to my surprise locked out the machine. There was after a short time nothing present except a link to validate the OS as it was not a valid OS
???. Normally I would bypass this using the "whatsit" for disabled thing (those who know what I mean know what I mean, so as not to give info to those who may be unethical) and get rid of it and maybe reinstall which may have sorted it out.
But I decided to ring my friendly Microsoft team and see what they had to say. Again
I informed them that they were being recorded for legal purposes (which turns a pain in the butt call into a slightly amusing enterprise) and they told me I had to use or buy a Vista Operating system disk and technical support would talk me through the problem (the help desk operator admitted to fix an issue they are aware of The first MS person to do so.). Now if I did not have a Vista retail disk and if I was a normal home user that would be almost the cost of buying a new laptop.
My gripe is because of their over zealous anti-piracy software included in the new MS update packages or some other more sinister conspiracy theory reasoning
they have again made performing a normal task into a time consuming waste of both time and money.Note: I do not use pirated software but have had the occasional client whose OS and/or software is hacked (they deny all knowledge of course because it was the son or brother or uncle Ted, or it was on it when they brought it out of the newspaper etc ). So the other thought was that when pirated software is reported via MS update, does MS track that IP address and send their little gremlins to take a peek and screw with the normal processes (I have my own IP Address).
If so this is kind of illegal.
I am only guessing, but after this has happened so many times it make me wonder.
Has anyone else come across this or similar at all?
