The problem is caused by the installation of the Silicon Image Sil 3112
SATA/RAID driver update (in my case). It could be that other drivers from
this manufacturer were pushed out at the same time for different
controllers. After a reboot, the SATA drive appears as a new drive to the
O/S. The O/S therefore thinks that it has been installed on a new or second
computer. WGA fails miserably. I was not even presented with an option to
re-activate my O/S. I was just notified by popup that the operating system
was ***Not Genuine***.

THIS IS NO GOOD AND MUST BE FIXED BY MICROSOFT. A driver update must not
ever cause this to happen.

Rolling back the driver in device manager ***does NOT*** solve the problem.
You would have to restore your computer to a point in time before you
downloaded/installed the updates. Then download them again - with the
exception of the offending update. Then "hide" the offending driver so you
are not tempted to install it at a later date.

If you are building your system for the first time, and have held off
activating your O/S, you can, of course, install this update. You would
activate after the drivers has been installed. But if a new update comes out
in 2-3 months it would likely do the same thing all over again.

I have reported this to Microsoft this evening. When I hear anything I will
report it in these news groups.


--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!