TSGL: The pirates are being shot

[Don Penlington]

2 of my friends have over the last few days rung me to say that on reboot 
of XP they are getting a message from Microsoft indicating the use of a 
non-uauthorised version of XP.

In both cases they have OEM versions, presumably unregistered, on 2nd-hand 
computers.  I have checked startups, and looked through the usual registry 
Run entries on one of the computers, but cannot find where this message may 
be originating.

I'm wondering if Ms has suddenly opted for a rootkit to originate these 
messages.

One had his XP on auto-updates which I've now disabled--presumably that's 
how these messages started. The other had tried to download a piece of 
software from the Ms site.

The messages are no more than a mild annoyance on startup, and seem to be a 
new addition to the usual validation procedure.

Does anyone have any idea how they can eliminate these messages?

Don Penlington
 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html