Microsoft launched Windows Genuine Advantage back in 2005 and later added Office Genuine Advantage to complete an ecosystem of Genuine Advantage, named Microsoft Genuine Advantage, a mechanism to help fight the piracy of Microsoft products, mainly Windows OSes and Office programs, globally.

You can find more info on Windows Genuine Advantage by visiting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage.

Well what we are going to talk about today is everything inside the MGA, Microsoft Genuine Advantage. What’s inside it? How it actually functions? How to identify whether you are running an ungenuine Windows or Office and how to fix? 

1. What’s inside MGA?

There are two parts. The most famous part is the online Windows Genuine Advantage ActiveX plug-in while there exists a less known one, discrete component that can work offline to determine in more detail, named Microsoft Genuine Advantage Diagnostic Tool, which can be downloaded here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/E/7/AE7154F4-E4FA-46D7-A7C1-D8E777C7E6E9/MGADiag.exe

Most people are probably familiar with the online version of MGA, which is required if you want to patch some Windows components or many Office programs. Also during Windows Update or Microsoft Update, it is automatically downloaded and run on your computer prior to any updates checking, although it’s up to you to decide whether you would like to give it a spin.

Actually more attention should be paid to a somewhat much less popular but much more informative program direct from Microsoft, MGA Diagnostic Tool.

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There is tons of information under the hood of this MGAdiag.exe. Press Continue and start the journey.

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Validation Status, Part of your product key, Product ID, Product Type, and Windows OS version can all be shown in great details here.

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And Validation Status about Office is also available.

You think this is all. Nope. This is just a beginning. If you run this Diagnostic Tool in post Vista OSes, switching to Licensing tab will unleash some critical info about your Windows. Basically, this is the same result you will see by running “slmgr.vbs –dlv” within Command Prompt.

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Notice that Copy button? Press it and open a word editor, paste all the info there and you will see a lot, as shown in this example.

Besides all the info already available, there are some hidden details about your computer, a section began with File Scan Data,

File Scan Data–>
Other data–>
Office Details: <GenuineResults><MachineData><UGUID>{80896BFE-6226-40CF-9941-ED0631ED254F}</UGUID><Version>1.9.0006.0</Version><OS>5.1.2600.2.00010100.2.0.pro</OS><Architecture>x32</Architecture><PKey>*****-*****-*****-*****-2VXG6</PKey><PID>55274-OEM-2241642-62874</PID><PIDType>3</PIDType><SID>S-1-5-21-1275210071-1343024091-1801674531</SID><SYSTEM><Manufacturer>COMPAQ</Manufacturer><Model>Compaq Evo D510 e-pc</Model></SYSTEM><BIOS><Manufacturer>American Megatrends Inc.</Manufacturer><Version>JK.01.01</Version><SMBIOSVersion major="2" minor="3"/><Date>20020830000000.000000+000</Date></BIOS><HWID>841D3B4F01842052</HWID><UserLCID>0416</UserLCID><SystemLCID>0416</SystemLCID><TimeZone>Hora oficial do Brasil(GMT-03:00)</TimeZone><iJoin>0</iJoin><SBID><stat>3</stat><msppid></msppid><name></name><model></model></SBID><OEM/><GANotification/></MachineData> <Software><Office><Result>109</Result><Products/><Applications/></Office></Software></GenuineResults>
Licensing Data–>
N/A
HWID Data–>
N/A
OEM Activation 1.0 Data–>
BIOS string matches: yes
Marker string from BIOS: 1068B:Compaq Computer Corporation
Marker string from OEMBIOS.DAT: N/A, hr = 0×80004005
OEM Activation 2.0 Data–>
N/A

 

You can find out why exactly your computer failed activation or validation. We’ll discuss more about the info shown here in later discussions.

Microsoft Genuine Advantage Diagnostics Tool is a very useful toolkit from Microsoft, using which can help you find out the answers you need quickly to the failure concerning activation and validation.