Microsoft has recently designed a program called Windows Genuine Advantage to stop software piracy.

WGA consists of two parts. WGA Validation is required for downloading some pieces of software from Microsoft Web sites, but Microsoft says that it is not required for receiving critical security fixes through Automatic Updates.

The software sends a PC's Windows license key to Microsoft, which checks the key against ID numbers in a database of putatively pirated copies of the OS.

Although intended to stop pirated copies of Windows to access the Internet the
program spawned two lawsuits and has raised concerns about what Microsoft is
adding to its software updates. It appears that the program flagged some
legitimate copies of the Windows operating system as pirated.

Now Microsoft is trying to solve the problem and has released a fix
for users who are receiving invalid license pop-ups to help them reset the
license keys if their copy of windows is legitimate.

Yet another option: Independent programmers have created RemoveWGA, a
WGA Notifications removal tool that will remove the piracy-alerts afflicting your PC.

written by Cristian M.