This Christmas I added a Windows server to our home network because my kids were finding some favorite programs were unplayable over their RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) thin clients. So I bought a very inexpensive Windows 7 desktop and for $89 at Walmart added Microsoft’s Anytime Upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, which is needed to support remote RDP desktops. No luck with the RDP deployment so far, though, because MICROSOFT’S ANYTIME UPGRADE WEB SITE HAS BEEN DOWN FOR THE LAST TWO DAYS.
This is no way to run a business, Microsoft. My kids want their FusionFall.
I would have understood had the site really been down for maintenance as it says, but two days isn’t maintenance.
It would have made better sense, too, had the fail screen not required me to every time submit all my information before telling me the site was unavailable.
People who are headed to www.windows7.com/getkey are there for only one reason and if Microsoft knows that reason is unavailable, why not just put up a big OUT OF ORDER sign at the door and save us all some work?
So far I have wasted an hour of my time on this. Multiply that by the thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of would-be Christmas upgraders just like me and you have a prime example of how companies fail to respect their customers.
Looks like their activation servers are not working in more than one area. I had switched to an SSD system disk on my Mac Pro, and my Office 2011 Home & Business suddenly wanted another activation (ran fine after the move for a couple of days).
The server would not let me, and the phone robot had me go through the process only to have me call back later. I tried this twice.
Meanwhile, if it was not for AppleMail and iWork, I would be SOL.
Last Office I will buy…
Why not use Libre/OpenOffice (if you think an office package is useful) and be done with all of the hassles of proprietary license management and activation?
I wonder how much code is in MS Office simply to manage the activation process, (but which simply adds to the complexity and management overhead of the codebase). I, for one, refuse to be victim of such a user-hostile business model. Luckily, there are alternatives, and the best of them are also $0. This is also a response to the glib (and demonstrably false) “you get what you pay for” drone down below.
2nd! so close!!
Some observations:
1 — Everyone in Redmond is on vacation this week. This is understandable.
2 — It would be safe to guess Microsoft is not monitoring very well the critical services that supports its customers and sales.
3 — Microsoft probably did not know the service was offline and doesn’t have anyone working this week who can fix it.
4 — When firms become more dependent on Microsoft, its cloud, Office 365, etc. their services must stay up 24x7x365. Outages should only last minutes, not days.
> When firms become more dependent on Microsoft, its cloud,
> Office 365, etc. their services must stay up 24x7x365. Outages
> should only last minutes, not days.
And when pigs have wings, they will all fly to the top of mountains.
you climb five days, you reach the summit with no food, last bottle of oxygen pinging, nearly sunblind….
and there’s a pig as a guru, asking if you have any ears of corn.
now, your question for the Oracle is… ?
Why is Larry dressed as a pig?
Office 364 and counting (down).
Everyone is on vacation at Redmond for the week, this is understandable? Are you kidding me? It’s not understandable that they have a production website like that down for 2 hours let alone two days.
Crazy, isn’t it? I’ve worked in much smaller companies, and there was always someone on call for issues. Even in a 12-person company in the 1990s one employee was chosen each week to carry a pager and be available all weekend in case a customer had an issue (and this was in 3rd-party shipping, not even IT). A pager went off during an off-site holiday party with a trade show customer complaining that their product samples weren’t at the show even though they were told they were delivered. The CEO began making plans to grab a van he had access to, put their merchandise in it, and drive all night himself a few hundred miles to get the goods to the show. That’s when we got another page and the customer said they’d found the goods had been delivered, just to the wrong part of the building.
If our little company can do that (and all we were doing was booking loads for other companies to deliver), how can anyone think that Microsoft shouldn’t or couldn’t go as far? At an even smaller company I spent both Christmas and New Year’s Eve 1999 working to meet a client’s sudden rush deadline (that turned out not to be rushed at all as they called us up three weeks after the deadline asking to be walked through installing it and the boss hit the mute button on the phone right before I began yelling and banging on things 🙂 ).
Hey Bob, how have the Kindle Fire’s worked out for you? Didn’t you say you were going to get one each for the kids? Is there an article forthcoming about this?
Working on it….
Good to hear you’re working on one for the Fire. I got one for my wife for Christmas, and to say I was dismayed by the pre-installed dictionary’s so-called search mechanism was an understatement.
Hellooo, Dictionary.com app….
Here is the most detailed review I’ve seen yet: http://webserver.computoredge.com/online.mvc?zone=SD&article=toc&session=31f7f07431c6218a5946646ae9a99a39
Let’s try that again:
http://webserver.computoredge.com/editorial/2952/coverprint.htm
John, If Microsoft is not a 24/7/365 operation by now, it never will be. Amazon, Apple, SAP, United, Amtrak, New York Utilities, etc are and have been for years. I am sure that not only are the activation servers meant to be critical uptime assets but there are complex monitoring systems. However, something major failed and it’s inexcusable for such a company.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
The problem is the attitude: who else are they going to turn to? They know that no matter how poorly they perform in the desktop OS space, people will continue to buy their product. As long as consumers continue to refuse to explore other possibilities (especially in an era when so much software is web-based), Microsoft will be able to get away with this. The reality is that even if the product key activation is down for two weeks, Mr. Cringely will probably buy the upgrade.
Me, I put OpenSUSE Linux on my system and RDP and VNC are baked right in. In fact, I was going on an important trip and was able to turn SSH on with just checking a box. Then, 160 miles away, I could connect via encrypted SSH to my desktop with an old laptop, and SSHFS used FTP over SSH to make the connection look like a local file system. I could browse, read and write files with all of my applications just as if they were on a directory on the laptop. I could also login remotely and control the system via VNC. I also gained full disk encryption without having to pay for the “ultimate” version of MS Windows.
Unless more people are willing to consider doing things like that, nothing will keep Microsoft from delivering the poor customer performance they did in this example.
Use ultravnc and save the money on the upgrade.
Hey Bob, Did you see this note on the link you provided?
“NOTE: Your PIN cannot be used to upgrade Windows 7”
Windows = fail.
MicroSoft = fail.
Remember what happened when they took over Danger/Sidekick?
Redmond is just not ready to offer anything cloud. Five Nines is so 1990s.
Think Google, how may times have to tried to use Google and it was unavailable?
Microsoft = Desktop, so not cloud.
@Bob: Yet another reason someone needs to move native Linux game development beyond the noble effort made by Loki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_Software ) at the turn of the century. Unfortunately they focussed on porting windows games, instead of creating unique content. Que será será – but it doesn’t have to (be).
@Drew: when you mentioned 5-9s I started to get a twitch over my left eye. I make my bread and butter cobbling together report data from various sources in our network – and upper management sounds like a gaggle of geese when discussing performance measurements, “FIVE NINES! IT’S GOT TO BE FIVE NINES!”
Of course, this makes absolutely no sense when you are measuring a high availability/pooled system where you can take down several servers at non-peak hours with zero impact to paying customers. If you are measuring the engineering of the gear you are buying – I can buy that measurement – but don’t bet my bonus check on it for Pete’s sake! I know, my cross to bare – sorry for the digression.
Regarding the respect for customers, Forbes has an article up positing that by switching from the idea their purpose was to create customers to that of maximizing shareholder value, corporations have moved to paying executives exorbitantly to fail at both.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/
The mantra around here is ‘increase shareholder value’ – so I know exactly what you are talking about. I’ve often wrestled with what I personally could do to improve shareholder value (stock price), and as of yet haven’t found a darn thing I can do in my capacity – yet the CEO continues to exhort us to do so. I guess getting laid off so as to allow funding for dividend payments to the shareholders might qualify? j/k hhos!
Bob, I thought you would have figured Microsoft by now.
I am not going to bore anyone with the number of times that I have been screwed by the b__tards from Redmond.
Welcome to Apple and Linux.
Cheers and Happy New Year.
Jacob
Windows 8 Beta is still available and it’s free.
I think it’s called the “pre-beta build”. But Windows 7 can be free for 700 days at a time. Google the words: Windows 7 enterprise 700 days.
Microsoft is so well protected from any communication from the other side of their “moat” I think it will take more than two days before anyone in Redmond will hear about the outage from the outside world.
I am sure their internal monitoring says “everything looks good from here”.
Tried to see if I could report a bug and couldn’t find any way to report it to Microsoft!
Windows Live Mail – Do a full search (you need to go in to the individual email sections, not the all bit because they can’t do that now, even though it was fine with the old version). Then try to limit the date to “Before” and you’ll see it acts as an “After” filter. Dumb.
Being an Apple user since 1981, I’ve had years of watching the sad outcomes many otherwise sane people inflict on themselves by making the Microsoft choice.
Now that things have changed and some stars are aligning in the universe, I was hoping that Redmond would get it together and their customers could, as I claim with using a Mac: “Have a computer, and a life.” but, alas, I guess not.
As far as I was (and am) concerned: If it don’t work on a Mac, it don’t work – or I don’t need it. Simple, effective strategy.
“Microsoft, by the way, was essentially flat, with 5.2 percent market share [for smart phones]. Admit it, that’s over twice what you thought it was. And I’d just remind everyone that Apple’s Mac OS X controls that exact same market share in the global PC market before you dismiss it as an also-ran.”
https://www.winsupersite.com/article/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/wininfo-short-takes-december-30-2011-141756
Ronc – most of that market share is from Windows Mobile 6.X, and not WP7.
The point I was making (in response to the previous post) is that a 5% market share is small and it’s also the market share Apple has in the “truck” PC market. So even though Mac is “superior”, 95% of the world-wide market has avoided it for one reason or another.
So we switched our office over to Apple about 4-5 yrs ago – all is peachy now.
MS update fandango banished for all but some engineering laptops.
BUT, this Christmas my wife bought me Rosetta Stone (apparently my being able to order La Grand MAC avec Pommes Frites in Paris the last couple of trips – well she expects more . . ) – their charming install didn’t work three times I tried it but IT BEHAVED DIFFERENTLY EACH TIME.
EVEN DIFFERENT THAN IN THE CUTE VIDEO on their support website.
Rosetta support consisted of leaving an email message and we’ll get back to you . .
So it’s not just a Microsoft tradition.
Cloud computing – ya right . . . in their dreams.
Hope this stuff never runs airplanes . . . “Your loss of altitude is important to us,
You are 128,200 in que . . . ”
We lose more customers that way.
Fusion Fall looks really neat!
I was interested in Lego Universe, but I don’t want to pay the subscription fee.
However, I also don’t want to be subjected to advertising.
Also, I am unsure I want to get the kids started in online RPG and social networking just yet… still in Grade 3.
In the meantime we got Lego Mindstorms for Christmas and are going to be playing with that for awhile….
Microsoft headquarters has the same prime directive we used in Viet Nam — “Due to lack of interest today has been cancelled.”
That’s today in Samoa: https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/30/samoa-loses-day-date-line
Only a one-off for the citizens of Samoa though, and they got paid for it.
Are we sure THEY didn’t pay for the change? It’ll make a difference on Dec. 20th.
“two days isn’t maintenance”
Who are you to decide? Do you know what they are doing? I agree that companies fail to respect their customers. Maybe their message should’ve read something like “in between Xmas and New Years we are out of business for a few days”. Would that’ve made you feel better? Apparently you’re also part of the I want it and I want it now generation.
When software is crippled and requires a website, it needs to be up *all* the time. Imagine a new Chevvy in your driveway, unable to start it as the activation centre is closed for maintenance……
Oh Jean-Paul, you and millions of others believe they are not part of the instant get it now generation until you need something now! bwahaha
You obviously have no IT experience. Well managed maintenance includes NO customer downtime. None. Easily achieved by a server farm with appropriate redundancy. Same for unplanned issues. One server down, others fill in the gap.
There obviously is something terribly wrong over in Redmond. The company has been unable to execute for a decade now. Look at the stock price. Same as it was in 1998. That’s 12 years ago, no growth. Dead, but not buried.
I think Bob’s more part of the “I paid $89 for a product I’d like it to work” generation.
I don’t think I’ll ever get over my amazement when I see otherwise sane and tech-savvy individuals such as yourself get screwed over by Microsoft AGAIN, and yet willingly continue to send money their way.
Muck Ficrosoft. Pirate the crap if you really think you need it. Better yet walk away. It’s the only sane response to this insanity.
Why am I not surprised? The stench of decay is all over Microsoft.
You should have bought a Mac Mini. It supports that game and VNC can remote control it.
I don’t know if you have any interest in gaming yourself but Windows gaming is undergoing something of a golden age at present. There are some really excellent indies titles being made and most of the bigger console titles get ported as well. Get yourself over to STEAM to see where it is all at.
We can only assume that their SLA says 99% uptime and that they have achieved that for this year 🙂
This does not bode well for Azure!
Bob,
I thought you knew this already, but you are NOT Microsoft’s customer. Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc – they and the large companies buying volume licenses (e.g. IBM, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, etc.) are their customers; not you, or me, or any other individual Microsoft software users.
As such, the site could be down indefinitely and they won’t lose a customer or a sale as far as they count them.
But they certainly do thank you in the mean time for adding two new licenses to their count of Win7 sales.
The Blue Screen of Death virus has migrated to the cloud. Be afraid, be very afraid!
uh, that’s the Blue Sky of Death.
if ever you have been in the back room of a reseller getting Windows licenses for refurbished laptops, Bob, you would know Microsoft is NOT in the licensing business.
that’s not what they tell Wall Street.
but you can’t get one on the phone from their robotic overlords reliably, either. dropped calls at the last step. ring-no-answers like you were trying to get to the refund department. computer chokes and “try again later.”
that was 4 years ago, and appears things haven’t changed.
how is it the stock hasn’t broken the five-spot yet?
That reminds me of the HP Support Center. I could access it if I was an HP customer (EDS), but HP bought EDS and I could no longer download stuff using IE7+, but I could use FireFox or put an ugly regedit bandaid to make IE work…
Just a few years back I fielded the support call from a major major software company.
The CEO had ordered their entire website shut down and locked down … until “the problem” was definitely and provably fixed.
The company had just activated their new online service: buy-it-and-download-it-instantly for all of their products using just one web page!
Their very junior JSP programmers had written that page using a User Manual template example. (Think about that.)
The online customer was supposed to type (not select, but TYPE) in the name of the software they wanted to download.
But some clever person noticed that by just typing in a Linux server style path, the server would reply by sending either the directory listing OR a file. (Oh no!)
That disreputable person downloaded the entire server structure and content … and then uploaded it to an Internet site and broadcast a “come and get it!” :^)
BY THE WAY: Did you know about the following?
– – – – – –
ZDNet : December 29, 2011
Microsoft releases out-of-band security update to plug .NET hole
By Ed Bott
Summary: Just in time for the new year, Microsoft released a rare out-of-band security update, its 100th of the year. The update represents “holiday heroics” for the team that sacrificed Christmas to plug a serious security hole.
…Exploits against unpatched systems could allow an attacker to “take any action in the context of an existing account on the ASP.NET site, including executing arbitrary commands….”
– – – – – – –
Maybe MS is busy patching every machine they own?
Maybe someone other than MS is already in command of all of those MS servers?
Who knows! :^)
Happy New Year, Cringe!
“Consumers are not vulnerable unless they are running a web server from their computer.”
https://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows-server/microsoft-releases-band-security-update-net-framework-141749
i think one of the individuals nailed it…
those who pirated the real copy of microsoft windows 7 probably don’t have to worry about a key generating website for any upgrade.
those who actually paid for a real copy of windows 7 and an upgrade are the ones getting screwed here.
Not sure which individual you are referring to, but the Enterprise trial is legitimate, not pirated, comes directly from Microsoft, and still requires activaton…in fact it requires activation 7 times (once per 100 days).
I have no sympathy for you.
Fool you once, shame on Microsoft. Fool you numerous times (over a couple decades), shame on you.
Totally agreed. The only (ethical) course of action to circumvent the sorts of user-hostile “anti-features” nearly all proprietary software vendors employ (i.e. any activation codes) is to … stop using them. The game companies would soon shift to more malleable platforms, and it would turn into a virtuous circle – those platforms would soon have far better graphics, sound, and hw support that Windows (or OS X) ever had. That said, Linux, out of the box, has better hw support than Windows or Mac already.
“Out of the box” perhaps. But every computer I’ve ever bought came with special hardware and special drivers wiitten only for Windows. (Think Blu-ray, 3G broadband, and sound cards sometimes with a shared in/out jack.) There is plenty of free and built-in drivers and software for Windows, less for Mac and Linux.
“So far I have wasted an hour of my time on this. Multiply that by”…
If all of the time wasted by Microsoft customers over the years was billed to Gates and Ballmer at even $1 per hour, they would both be broke many times over. Their genius was in convincing corporations that this waste and inefficiency was not only normal, it needed a dedicated staff of IT MCSE pro-fesh-uh-nuls to manage it!
All clouds are down sometimes. Cars break down. People get sick. Bla bla. I don’t really get all the MS hate here. Like all commenters are stuck in the 90’ies. Clouds of Google, Amazon, RIM and Apple have been down this year as well. (Yes, Apple.)
Hey Bob, went to do your survey and Google reports that the link is broken. Happens to the best sites. Just poking the bear.
On a serious note, enjoy your work, have been watching and reading since the early 90’s keep it coming.
Hey Bob,
Maybe you should consider decking the kids out with Mac Minis. I know, not as efficient as running the whole thing through dumb terminals, but it would make the overwhelming majority of your shows watchable, and you would get the whiz bang of iTunes, which is rapidly becoming a competent service.
Say, Bob…unlike some of the iFans, I’m going to give you a bit of
advice that isn’t “buy a Mac”. Instead of being somewhat of a spendthrift,
why didn’t you purchase a Windows machine that already had the version
you would need installed? You know, instead of buying the WallyWorld
special year-end close out of last years leftovers, go ahead and add maybe
another hundred dollars or so and get Windows 7 Ultimate instead of Home?
You still would have spent less than you would have on a iToy, saved your
time spent trying to get your activation and been playing games with the
kids.
Remember the old adage, “you get what you pay for”…sometimes it’s true!
What am I missing? You can “get what you pay for” even at half price!
https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=acer+home+server
Steve Ballmer is in charge. Why would something from Microsoft not working be a surprise?
…and this comes as news to you?
The best Windows upgrade is a Mac.
Yes, here, let me help you cut that nasty Microsoft packing tape off that’s strapping your wrists together, and I’ll help you replace it with these velvet lined hardened steel handcuffs you’ll *never* get out of. Great advice, Scott. There’s only one real option for people who realise how idiotic this situation is. Sadly, only about 1% of people are sharp enough to have that realisation.
This makes me long for the days of Colossal Cave and Big Iron in the back room…
If the server is down this won’t help, but, I have run into problems doing exactly what Bob is trying.
To resolve it, I went to Windows Updates, Update History.
Found Service Pack 1 and Removed it.
Ran the Anytime Upgrade, and had it “fail”.
Rebooted the computer (Service Pack 1 is reinstalled automatically, I don’t think the Update Service is down.)
Tada! Windows 7 Professional
Another satisfied microsoft customer . . . 🙂
In spite of the “tada”, I am completely serious about this solving my Home Premium to Professional upgrade in a small business office with 6 computers.
I’ll have to try it . . . thanks.
[…] has written about another new case of Microsoft services failing. He claims that: No luck with the RDP deployment so far, though, because MICROSOFT’S ANYTIME […]
Awhile back I added rdp from some site. Google terms “hack rdp windows 7 home”
Be sure to get the right stuff per your Win7 version
Example:
http://andrewblock.net/2010/02/23/enable-remote-desktop-on-windows-7-home-premium-64-32-bit
Happy New Bob
It gives us non computer people such pleasure to see you struggle with MS. The problem is MS thinks you are getting your $89 moneys worth. You bought a license and agreed to their terms. They are done with you. Oh I am so sorry you thought it should actually work. Well you certainly have enough comments on this one.
Just think of it as a toll road during construction season ( exactly when is that season?) and you paid big money to use the road and you are stuck in traffic not moving. Welcome to MS.
Any ideas on Computer to TV hook ups????
“non computer people”. We all started out that way, but chose not to remain that way.
[…] week one of my favorite technologists Bob Cringely complained on his blog about Microsoft’s Anytime Upgrade service. He purchased the service so that his kids could play […]
Hmm, the UK RoyalMail.com site for buying postage etc has been down for more than a MONTH – 2 days ain’t so bad is it? 😉
[…] week one of my favorite technologists, Bob Cringely, complained on his blog about Microsoft’s Anytime Upgrade service. He bought the service so that his kids could play […]
I have tried for three days running and have not been able to get a product key as the website is down. Have also gone through the process of entering info on each occasion before getting the message that the site was down. I rang the helpline yesterday and was told to try again later. When I objected to this response, I was told to ring another number which I was given. When I got off the phone I realised it was the number I had already called. Today I rang again and was told the department responsible for product keys is only open Monday to Friday. Have spent the last hour looking for an address to send a complaint to – can’t find one anywhere. If I ran my business like that then I’d be unemployed.
[…] week one of my favorite technologists, Bob Cringely, complained on his blog about Microsoft’s Anytime Upgrade service. He purchased the service so that his kids could play […]