There was an article about 6 months ago that had a statement from an official at MS that stated that the actual percentage of false-positives was less than 5% of the reported number of invalid copies.

Sorry, I did not bookmark the article, but it was on one of the more prominent sites for MS reviews.

I have done at least 50 clean installs on machines in the last 9 months without any issues on installs and updates on a number of machines. The only issue I have found is that the control software took a minute or two on a few occassions to run the check.

I am not sure what realistic alternatives would be available due to the incessant need for some people to use pirated software.   

I've 'rebirthed' about a dozen XP machines over the past 12 months, mostly 'Pro', and only had one kick up a fuss on activation.

'Rebirthing' is the process whereby an office-leased machine is returned to the store to be resold as second-hand, needing the drive wiped and the OS re-installed.  Each has the reg 'sticker' attached, so the number is not a problem [except when it's poorly printed....8 = B , etc].

One IBM desktop machine didn't like the disk used to install the OS [I'd used the same on all] so on activation the comp popped up a 'call MS' message....but with a fair understanding of Indian-flavoured English it was soon sorted.

One 'hopes' that wasn't included in the 'Invalids' as it really had more to do with a crappy printing of the label than anything else...

WGA had tagged my install as invalid...and mine is NOT pirated...unless Dell sells pirated copies of Windows. I had to call microsoft to get it all fixed...what a royal pain...

I have a genuine copy... It validates OK on the MS website while downloading IE7. However, I think that turning off the BITS and Automatic Updates services means that the permanent client doesn't get installed.

lol only %22?

Personally, I think this is Microsoft's overkill reaction to OS piracy. It can be a huge pain to deal with their software--far more than it should be. I bought an upgrade WinXP Pro package from my local university bookstore a few years ago and attempted to install it on my machine running (a legal copy of) Windows 98 (machine exceeded WinXP specs); after attempting to install it on my own several times, I brought the machine and the XP to a local computer dealer, had him upgrade the mobo and RAM, and even after that, he ended up installing a copy of XP they had at his shop instead of the one I purchased at the store, because he couldn't get it to install completely either. I have since upgraded to a completely different machine and am running XP Media Center, but it just strikes me that if MS could find some balance point in their attitude towards piracy control between Stardock's GalCiv approach and their own present draconian "shut-down-your-OS-if-we-suspect-something-untoward" approach, it would do them a world of PR good and it wouldn't likely make a huge dent in their sales. As Adamness said, some people will pirate OS software no matter what; for me, it's a question of reliability. If I wanted to take a chance and use an illegal copy of an OS and hope that it doesn't transmit my data to some server in Malaysia or wipe my hard drive for no reason at random intervals, I guess I would do that, but it's just not worth taking that chance. I'd much rather pay for the software and have a reasonable expectation that any bugs I encounter are not deliberately placed there by malware programmers. (Microsoft seems to have a hard enough time keeping legitimate copies of its OS software secure!)

I think that this is just a stepping stone on the road to the day where we're all paying Microsoft a monthly fee to "rent" software that they keep on locked-down servers in Washington to run our computers and do word-processing, spreadsheet and database programming, and presentation creation. It's enough to make you want to switch to Linux and OpenOffice for good!

Not sure how they do it but here in Africa, as you probably know, pirating is rife and I 'll bet those figures are right . What you do in most countries here is you a) buy a new machine and windows is pre-installed (the tiny phone/computer/copy shop in Sudan street, or Kasavubu avenue,is going to instal a new disc? Not on your life), or, more interesting, you ask your local computer repair man to make you a copy of XP. He does, for a small "baksheesh", and you have a copy on a previously blank disc with a key?

This is where my ignorance comes in: How can he give you a serial key that is being used over and over? I thought that couldn't happen.

Some parts of Asia may be pirate heaven but I can assure you, Africa is pirate paradise. South Africa is one of the few countries where pirating is policed. That leaves 50 or so others where it isn't. Go figure.

I also had a brand new computer show up as invalid. Definitely not pirated. Called M$, and a rude lady answered and told me I was out of luck. I asked if she was interested in knowing which vendor I had purchased the computer from, she said "that's not my problem". Killer support