Hi there,

A few days sgo, I bought a computer on the Dutch website from eBay (yes, you also have eBay in the Netherlands…), and I let it ship to my home.

When I got it, I set it up and I booted up the machine. It was loaded with all kinds of stuff, including spyware, viruses and documents from the previous owner. I copied all the documents from the previous owner to a DVD and sent it to his home.

When that was done, I tried to clean op the Windows installation, since the previous owner had lost the installation disks in a recent move (I actually saw the mess in his house, so I can understand him…), but it didn’t worked out really great with all this nasty spyware installed on the poor machine… so I decided to install a pirated version of Windows, since I only own Windows 98…

I downloaded a copy from the Internet, and burned it to a disk. I installed the pirated copy from Windows to my machine.

Stupid mistake 1: Every country has a different alglorithm for making the product keys for Windows. I downloaded the American version of Windows, and my Dutch product key from my computer is… excactly. Dutch. So I downloaded a key generator to my computer, which installed these nice applications called Alexa Toolbar and WinDoctor 2007.

When I finished installing Windows XP to my computer, the computer rebooted and asked me to activate the product within 30 days. When I opened up the window, it says I didn’t have a legimate product key (duh!) and that I need to enter a correct one before I can continue activation the product…

Stupid mistake 2: I also tried installing key finders on the just new installed system to find legit product keys. I believed everything to make the machine work, but I believed a little too much than I would normally… I let get in all kinds of spyware with my head right above it…

When all those things didn’t really work out for me, I called the vendor of the machine, and the told me that I could reinstall the original system from the system disk whch was delivered with the system, but the previous user lost it, so… What I figured out that it wasn’t my problem, and I asked the previous owner to pay the little bill for the new disks, which is only $15.-. He accepted. And right now, I’m waiting for the disks, which will arive within 2 weeks…

I definatley learned my lesson about pirated software… well, at least I think…

Daan Berg.