Huge problems with Windows Genuine Advantage

Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage is a software purpose of which is to check the proper licence on copy of Microsoft Windows operating system.

Since Friday's evening (24 aug 2007) Windows Genuine Advantage service was unable to react to user's requests. Many owners of Windows XP and Windows Vista couldn't check the authenticity of their operating systems and, as a result, to receive updates, also some functions in Windows Vista have been disabled.

Microsoft have confirmed the existence of this problem and explained it as problems with WGA servers. Microsoft needed 24 hours to dispose this problem (it was announced before that this error won't be disposed before Tuesday). Microsoft is advising to re-check operating system if users couldn't do it before.

Alex Kokis, the manager of Microsoft have commented such errors in the WGA in his blog.

According to Kokis, the first failures in the Windows Genuine Advantage service have been noticed in the daytime on Friday, but Microsoft experts have identified problem only at the evening. At the saturday's lunch-time all problems were disposed. Kokis wrote that this problem have touched at least 12000 users. Unfortunately, Kokis haven't written about the causes of problems with WGA. But Microsoft's manager pointed that corporation will try to avoid such situations in the future.