Is your Vista Genuine? Check it via C# code.

Shaurya Anand — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:46:10 GMT

May be you are a die hard Microsoft fan, or just another bunch of showbiz talk-lock fella or more better you use some of the Vista features in your application and want that only genuine Microsoft Vista owners apply to your services.

Actually, I wrote this code like a year ago, and now while browsing through my backups, I noted that it lied there uselessly. I never used it but probably any one of ya might want to apply this logic.

This is the usage of the function:

   1: bool valid = new WgaHelper().IsVistaGenuine();

And this my fella, would be the code that verifies it genuinely:

   1: public bool IsVistaGenuine()

   2: {

   3:     bool isGenuine = true;

4:

   5:     if (IsVista)

   6:     {

   7:         Guid guidSlid = new Guid("55c92734-d682-4d71-983e-d6ec3f16059f");

   8:         Windows_SLID windowsSlid = ToGUID(guidSlid);

   9:         try

  10:         {

  11:             GenuineState genuineState = GenuineState.Last;

  12:             uint genuineStateUInt = SLIsGenuineLocal(ref windowsSlid, ref genuineState, IntPtr.Zero);

13:

  14:             if (genuineState != GenuineState.Genuine)

  15:             {

  16:                 isGenuine = false;

  17:             }

  18:         }

  19:         catch (Exception ex)

  20:         {

  21:             Debug.Fail(ex.Message);

  22:         }

  23:     }

24:

  25:     return isGenuine;

  26: }

Explanation to working of the code, I will describe in later, here or maybe on CodeProject (I got no articles there )!

Here are the files, both demo executable and the source code:

Live Maps - Server Error in '/' Application

Shaurya Anand — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:08:10 GMT

This error is thrown when the culture of the browser is set to something that is not supported by the Microsoft's Live Map.

On my Internet Explorer 7.0, first preference is 'en-IN', the locale English language culture for the country India.

To resolve the issue, bring up 'en-US' locale to the top or remove the home culture temporary. Restart your browser.