This is the message I was greeted with after a restart earlier today. I'd already had a pop up telling me it wasn't a legit copy of Vista but I just clicked it away and ignored, knowing my Vista is genuine.

After my restart there was a watermark - more like bold white text actually, bottom right corner of my desktop saying my Vista was illegal! Then I noticed there was new important updates trying to grab my attention - I allowed it update and it seems to have killed the problem. Anyone else have this? Should I be worried? Virus? Or just another Microsoft fuck up, they're obviously well aware of it if they released an urgent update to sort it.

Sounds like some sort of malware.. was it asking you to click somewhere to pay for windows to make it legal?

I had that a few years ago on XP.. but nothing like that for a while.

When MS do find an illegal version of an OS they do start limiting that machine and then add watermarks to the desktop and eventually all you can do is imput a serial number or use IE.. and that's it...

If its gone I would say that the flag was a false positive and when the servers noticed the issue was fixed...

Just keep your photos backed up.. and hope nothing happens

That would be my main concern, photos. nothing else on here that can't be gotten again.

It seems to be ok now. My first thought was malware or virus, but it started acting like it was official and microsoft-y. Googling the problem brought up the usual mesh of forums and people suggesting all kinds of registry soloutions, I don't like to go anywhere near that.

It must have been some fuck up in one of their latest updates, if it happens you, now you know, just update