Posted on Friday 26 May 2006
I recently installed a fresh copy of Windows XP onto an old machine, and I’m going through the endless cycles of Windows Update trying to get it secure enough to be used (after the most important first step, installing Firefox). I turned on automatic updates, which installed 18 or 19 patches, but didn’t do any service packs.
So I went to the Windows Update web site to see if I could get SP2 installed there, but first it promtped me to do the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) check to make sure I was running a real copy of Windows. By the way, what a stupid name: genuine advantage. If it means jumping through hoops like this, as opposed to illegal copies that would just skip all of this, where’s the advantage? But I click through, figuring it’s no big deal.