Hail Ho to the crackers over the world. They’ve done it again! Microsoft had planned on launching the final Retail version of it’s latest badboy, Windows 7 Ultimate and other flavors somewhere around last week of October. But the rest of the world had other plans. According to some sources, hackers and crackers somehow managed to get a copy of the OEM disc of Windows 7 Ultimate, which was actually meant for Lenovo. From there onwards, it was all but a cakewalk for them crackers.

It had been only a week since the official announcement made by Microsoft regarding the Windows 7 launch, but the infamous crackers managed to get the copy of the OS, activate and validate the tweaked out Ultimate version of the same OS. The cracking procedure wasn’t new, it was the same they used on Windows Vista versions. All they had to do is get a validation key and the CD-key out of the OEM disc and the disc was cracked.

But, even though this was all simple, this OS required a hardware tweak for the first time to run properly. The user has to change some of the BIOS values of the motherboard, in order to dupe the OS in thinking that the machine is a validated one. The procedure is painfully easy, as described in the SLIC (Software Licensing Description Table) that is stored in the system’s ROM during bootup. All said and done, it seems sad that the crackers got the better part of the software giant and since this OS is promising enough and firms the beliefs that it is far better than it’s predecessors. Let’s hope Microsoft finds a way around this hack.

For TechMirage,
Pranav Shirodkar