The update, which will hit some Vista Ultimate systems via Windows Update this week, and others in the weeks to come, is the newest move in an anti-activation crack campaign Microsoft launched almost a year ago.
Such cracks avoid Vista’s built-in counterfeit-detection technology by sidestepping product activation essentially fooling the operating system into thinking it’s legitimate.
The latest update targets “SoftMod”, an activation hack that tricks Vista into thinking it’s being booted on a PC that had the operating system installed and activated at the factory. Typically, computer makers pre-activate Windows before they ship systems, eliminating the task for customers.
SoftMod can be used to create a bootable CD, which then must be used each time the PC is booted or it can be installed on the machine’s hard drive with utmost care.
The SoftMod detection update will be offered only to Vista Ultimate users. They are releasing this update to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition only at this time and only to systems with English as their primary language
Microsoft delivered two activation crack updates last year to all Vista users as a preliminary step before it launched Service Pack 1 (SP1). Those updates fingered “Grace Timer” and “OEM BIOS”, but only notified the user of their presence and offered a solution. SP1, was released to the general public several weeks later, also detected the two cracks. If a hacked copy of vista was upgraded to SP1, Windows would immediately start displaying on-line messages that the copy is counterfeit.
After receiving the newest update, copies of Vista Ultimate hacked using SoftMod will pop-up a warning that reads, “Windows has found software that circumvents Windows activation and interferes with its normal operation. The presence of such software may indicate that your copy of Windows is counterfeit.”
The pop-up also includes a link to instructions on how to remove the crack.
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