Still would be interesting to see your result although I assume it will work fine, so a real accurate test would be to do what I suggested of course...
Anyone know is there is a MSI Windows 7 Pro key floating around? I'd like to keep everything MSI is possible... Thanks
By the way, I don't mind installing WIN7 again on a different partition and test it, if you can send me a link to download the same ISO you use, just to properly verify if this is ISO related or not. Please feel free to PM me the details.
I don't think the oem key has to match at this point. I have an MSI laptop that came with Windows 7 Home premium. Wiped it installed Ultimate, used the cert that came with laptop, and used the ASUS ultimate key as there is no MSI Ultimate key. It has the WAT update installed for several days and still get genuine status. If MS was checking keys, I think this would be easy one to flag.
Oh it will come!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would put money on it. I personally think M$ made this optional at present is to fine tune WAT and how they read the data WAT collects. By making it optional, you would think the majority of people who load WAT will be legit users. That way M$ then plays with WAT, its parameters, and see at what point they go too far and catch too many legit users. Matching the key will certainly come in future checks, as well as Motherboards, BIOS dates etc etc etc. Once they know how far they can go and not upset their legit users, analysing the data returns, you will see it manditory. I will bet matching keys will come into play. Bios dates is fuzzy, but i see really old BIOS gone, and motherboard manufacturers matching I see at present wont be touched, too many cross swapping going on in computerland
BIOS dates seems flaky, as that can probably be edited, as well as people installing legitimate BIOS updates from the manufacturer. Not that common for your mainstream systems, but possible that would lock out many legit users I would say they are building hashes of bios (in conjunction with some motherboard based hardware identifiers) so they have a large database of known "legit" combos that shipped with OEM systems. If you change absolutely anything in the bios (or the date, or anything really) then this invalids the hash. If you have 1 million of one hash for a known BIOS+manu with most common motherboard, and 20k of another hash for the same manu/different m/board you can block the 20k (or at least investigate these systems further as suspect).This is not infallible though, because if you can have the exact same motherboard/bios/slic/keys then you could pass. As people have said large manus such as Dell can use a large number of different motherboards, giving users a lot of options to work it (e.g. just buy the right motherboard if given a choice). It seems like a lot of effort on their behalf to manage that database which still can be worked around. Blocking out the most obvious software cracks helps keep street corner discs out of action though, lets hope they think that is enough. That said, bright minds may be able to work out how to deliver known validated BIOS hashes to WAT so a machine passes as genuine as well. I imagine software loaders simply pass the required pieces of bios presently to the system, they may just have to be expanded to send a whole bios??
I was just saying that at least for now, they do not seem to be checking to see if the key matches the manufacturer, maybe later they will. Given that it is currently voluntary, there is nothing to worry about from it at this point in time, just don't install the update and no difference. I do have a legitimate key for the ultimate version, just would rather hold onto it and not use it. I have no doubt that they will tighten it up. The only unknown is how tight they are willing to go. They have to err on the caution side so it doesn't create a headache for MS and a lot of problems for users. I would guess that they are collecting information from machines regardless of whether or not the WAT update is installed.
I wonder how the information exchange is between the WAT service that is running on every PC and Microsoft's own WAT servers. For example, does the WAT service on its own based on a predefined script flag an installation as non-genuine? An off-line validation. Or does it scan like what MGADiag.exe does and sends the result info back to MS and then MS servers send a command back to flag the PC as non-genuine? An online validation. For now, it seems WAT does a little bit of both. The third question would be which ones trigger an off-line non-genuine invalidation and of course less known, which ones need an on-line connection to trigger invalidation?
I used the modded bios we had done here and then opatool. It loaded a MSI cert and then the ACER/GATEWAY/PACKARD Win7 Pro key from the depository.
I have a question about bios mods. How prevalent is it? I'm using Daz's loader and it still works fine but I'm thinking about taking the risk and go the bios mod route. I'm sure most people use loaders and will eventually be detected by M$. On the other hand, I think bios mods are definitely not wide spread and will be insignificant to M$. Average people would find it risky and most people don't know how to mod a bios, unless they find their way here. So, which is a better choice at this point? I've collected the necessary files for a mod but damn, I'm really not confident about doing it.
Make sure you know how to recover from a bad flash before you actually flash. Otherwise there is no better or worse choice at this point. If MS actually starts killing the loaders or bios mods, the choice will become clearer.
I think I'd rather wait until the choice is clearer like you said. Although I've read extensively on bios mods and flash recovery, I don't think I have all the tools necessary... i.e. i don't have a usb floppy @venu Thanks for your response
My reading is simple, as is the brilliance of WAT to some extent. WAT sends everything that Magdig can dig up on your machine. Ie it sends ALL known information about your machine. It doesn't matter how relevant the information is, it just sends it. Now this is what I hate about WAT. Its an invasion of privacy on the highest level. It shouldn't be allowed (and I dont care whatever M$ EUCA says). But the brillance of it is that down the line M$ has ALL the info about your machine, so it can at any time set what it thinks what ever parameters its like as the ones thats makes a machine non-genuine. Be it keys, certain combinations of SLIC, Certificates and keys, and yes Bois and motherboards. Its the flexibility that allows M$ to set the benchmark as to what they see as genuine that is nice here. BUT also true if we know what data they collect, its just as easy to manipulate that data to show the results that M$ wants to be genuine. It should be easy to manipulate the registry to show this. Worst case senario - BIOS mods are the go, with a simple registry twig to make sure the data sent to M$ looks legit. BUT I dont think we will come to this.
I installed the WAT update and I am still activated. I have a bios mod using a Dell cetificate on a ASUS motherboard.