philo wrote:

An XP registry hack was posted here to extend the updates on XP ,
The hack modified the registry to list the product version as XP
embedded.

The hack does not cause XP itself to think it is POS2009. If you apply
the hack and right-click on My Computer and select properties, the
system will still report the OS as Window XP, SP3. Not POS2009.

The hack makes the WindowsUpdate mechanism think your system is
POS2009. Everything else on the system, all other software, and even
the OS itself, does not look at those registry entries.

I tried it on my old XP machine which I don't use anymore and the
first time I tried to update XP the hack worked.

Now a week or so later I checked to see if more updates were
available and I got the "non genuine Windows" notification.

Was version of XP does that "old machine" have?

Is it SP2 or SP3?

Was any hardware changed on it such that it failed the hardware hash?
Did you, say, remove, replace or simply unplug the CD rom drive? Did
you change or clone a hard drive or video card, or add or remove or
otherwise change the amount of installed RAM? Did you change the
ethernet card (or disable the on-board ethernet adapter?).

Did you change or update any hardware drivers? It is a known fact that
updating some drivers, especially video-card drivers, will change the
hardware hash reported to the validation routine. If too many hardware
items come back with different hashes, then Windows will automaticially
put itself into a "non-validated" state and will remain there for (I
think) about a month before other things start to happen. The remedy is
to let the validation routine do an on-line check with Microsoft, where
it will re-validate itself.

There is a program called "xpinfo.exe" which will tell you which
hardware items are passing and failing the validation hash. If the
system does not have 5 positive "hash votes" (out of something like 10
or 13 possible votes) then then your XP installation will consider
itself to be "non-genuine" until you allow it to perform an on-line
validation check.

Also note that bios updates of the motherboard and other hardware
devices like CD-rom firmware will also likely cause a loss of a positive
hardware-hash vote.

So to all those out there....DO NOT USE THE HACK!

There are ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER REPORTS of other systems experiencing WGA
failures because of using the POS2009 hack.

What also could have happened is that when you were performing the
WindowsUpdate check, you chose "Automatic" instead of "Custom", and by
choosing automatic you did not pick and choose which updates were being
downloaded, and you downloaded one of those WGA validation checks and
your system failed the check (which happens many times, even on legit
systems).

I always tell people who manually update XP to never download the WGA
"Genuine Validation" update, and to de-select it from the update list so
the system will never download it even when they switch to automatic
instead of custom update.