‘Blackouts’ and missing icons for users of pirated Microsoft Windows this week

Pirated Windows XP professional user beware, remember the nagging balloon that appear everytime you boot up windows? the Windows Genuine Advantage program Microsoft secretly introduce in SP2? Yes, it is back and this time it is meaner.

Starting Wednesday, users with pirated copies of Microsoft Corp’s Windows XP Professional operating system (OS) on machines that are Internet-capable could find their computer displays going black and with no screen icons visible.
There are 8.6 million users of Win XP Pro in Malaysia and about three million are expected to suffer the “blackouts,” according to Microsoft Malaysia.
To continue working, the user would need to reset the machine’s desktop background. Everything will return to normal. But when 60 minutes are up, the black screen will reappear and the user must go through the whole process again. Source: TheStar

Since this WGA feature is new, I doubt there are any cracks available, the only way to go about the system is to purchase a genuine XP Pro serial from Microsoft. How about downgrading your Windows to Home Edition?

For your information, Windows Vista and Windows XP Home Edition are not included in the latest ‘blackout’ experiment.