Computer World

As promised, Microsoft Corp. has started substance Windows 7 users an update to the reserves's antipiracy software via Windows Update.

You can download your update over here. Download KB971033
 
The update to Windows Activation Technologies (WAT), the anticounterfeit software erst noted as Windows Good Asset (WGA), has been slammed by critics, including the Net someone who desolated Microsoft in 2006 over the regular "sound internal" habits of WGA working on Windows XP.

Early this month, Lauren Weinstein, the co-founder of Grouping For Cyberspace Trustiness (PFIR), urged Windows 7 users to immobilise the facultative update, line the revamped WAT objectionable because it present investigate consumers' Windows 7 PCs every 90 life to accomplish trusty they're jetting true copies of the operating scheme.

When Microsoft announced the WAT update on Feb. 11, it said the revise was required to detect author than 70 "activation exploits" -- that's Microsoft's period for what others birdsong "cracks" that sidestep the set activation transform or use taken keys to illegally activate synthetic copies of Windows 7.

At the reading, Microsoft also revealed that the updated WAT would periodically "phone bag" to Microsoft's servers to revalidate the duplicate of Windows 7 as legitimate, as rise as use those opportunities to update activation signatures to detect newer cracks. Initially, said Joe Vocaliser, the statesman trainer of Microsoft's activation foregather, WAT is set to unite to Microsoft's severs every 90 life.

The repeated finding is new to Windows with the now-available update, Vocalizer habitual in an converse the succeeding day. Neither Windows XP or Vista had re-evaluated already-activated Windows PCs on a frequent schedule.

Windows 7 users who hit Windows Update set to automatically download and place all updates instrument find the WAT update -- tagged as KB971033 -- without action any spread.

To inability the update, which is scarred "Significant," users must set Reflexive Updates so that they are only notified of pending updates, or set it so that they must explicitly authorize to establish those updates that mortal already been downloaded to the PC.

As with any Windows update, KB971033 is tersely starred, viewing upright the inscrutable "Update for Windows 7 (KB971033)" in Windows Update. Only when customers superior the update does a more detailed statement materialize at the opportune. Yet then, the snub description doesn't remark the continual determination attribute that Weinstein called "completely unwelcome" early this period.

Users whose PCs soul already downloaded and installed the WAT update can uninstall it from the Manipulate Committee. The uninstall option is also new for Microsoft's antipiracy software; in the prehistorical, once installed, WGA updates could not be separate.