Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Microsoft Mistakenly Sends Out Office Nag

Microsoft announced on April 15, 2008 that they had “inadvertently” published to WSUS servers the Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) notifications update (KB949810) for 24 hours. Intended as a trial of an anti-piracy program, it was meant for a limited distribution to only to Chile, Italy, Spain and Turkey.

The OGA program is intended to display nagging notices on copies of Microsoft Office it deems illegal. As a result of the mistake Microsoft Office admin’s are on the warpath trying to figure out why their software was deemed to be illegal and how they can fix the problem. Some companies report their entire inventory of Office products are now reporting that they need activation.

Microsoft released an official statement addressed to WSUS Admin’s on the Microsoft WSUS Team Blog. They explain what happened, but not how it happened. Microsoft is offering their “full assistance” to anyone having problems or questions.

If you were among those unlucky enough to receive this update a good place to start is the following Microsoft forum thread “Questions regarding KB949810” . The notices would appear on machines running copies of Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007.

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