Validation? Where did this come from?

So I built my own computer and purchased an OEM 3 pack of Vista 64 home premium from Amazon/TigerDirect. I installed it, and I am almost 100% I activated it in my system properties once I got to my desktop.

I have been running flawlessly for the last 2 weeks and all of a sudden I come home from work yesterday and there is a pop up saying that I may be "victim to software piracy" or something like that (it didnt say piracy but i forgot) and it prompts me to head to microsoft.com/genuine to validate or whatever. Problem is, when i get there, I can't validate and then it tells me to activate a certain service and try again and I can't activate the service.

Has this happened to anyone else? Do I just need to reinstall Vista?

Can you post the popup? It might be a Trojan Horse related popup to scare you into installing something. Microsoft would limit Vista features on an illegal copy or stop you from logging in. Did you call Microsoft to verify the license?

well I am not on the machine that gave me the issue but I can assure you it's something to do with Windows Genuine Advantage as it links me to the www.microsoft.com/genuine website to try to verify. The license is OEM and I activated once I installed windows and had no problems, so I am not sure why it is asking me to do all this now.

Popups can be faked and pointed to bad sites. I would suggest calling Microsoft about your licensing question.

Did you install that license a second time? I have heard of Microsoft only allowing one install / activation before forcing you to call for activation. Not prompting you to go to a web site. Sounds fishy. Call Microsoft.

It happens to be like my 4th time installing it b/c I was having issues w/ 4gb of RAM on the install so I had to wipe it a few times. I will call them and sort it out.

I have seen alot of popups reporting viruses, and other issues with your computer. They point to a site that will infect you. Any doubts, call Microsoft.

Do you have a wgatray.exe in system32 ?

Did you install SP1 just lately?

For some reason i had to re activate my windows install aft installing SP1

I am at my work computer right now so I dont know if that file is in my system32 but I installed SP1 the same day I installed windows and it ran fine for like 2 weeks.

For some reason windows does not notify you that you need to revalidate
It was just by chance that i noticed that my system licence said unregistered or something similar

By going to Control Panel\System and scrolling to the bottom you will see the windows activation section with product ID
you should see something similar to unregistered... just click in the blue text to re register you product