Office Genuine Advantage Notifications - should I install this update?

I would appreciate opinions and thoughts on a Windows Vista update, Office Genuine Advantage Notifications. Normally I faithfully, even Pavlovianly, install all Windows updates as they are made available. However, I hesitate about installing this particular update because I sense that it's primarily a monitoring program to seek out pirated and otherwise non-Windows-authorized software and that it is not useful or advantageous to my PC Office use. I certainly don't have anything to hide from Microsoft, as all of my MS and other branded software is genuine, including Office Home and Student. I just don't see that it provides any advantages for me and I'm not keen on a program to monitor the MS software I use.

What do others who have installed this update think of it? Am I wrong? Contrary to my assumptions, is it useful for the PC Windows Vista user who uses MS Office?

Thanks much for reading and any opinions and thoughts about this Windows Vista update.

 

Sounds like you don't need help with that, so installing it would be pointless AND expose you to the threat of MS doing stupid things (see WGA disabling legit Vista installations' Aero interface and update system in late 2007).

Yeah, right. Why wouldn't I want this on my system

 

In the past allowing WGA to proceed yielded two benefits that I've observed:

-Extras provided from Microsoft can be acquired. In office this may never be needed.
-It allowed me to not hear it nagging for a month.

I'd just let it proceed personally. Microsoft's privacy policy regarding the matter is clear that very little information is accessed. The policy doesn't suggest there is any avenue for them to be finding out information about non-Microsoft software.

 

I have a genuine copy of Office 2007 Enterprise and I know it's genuine because I used to download plug-ins that required the genuine authentication.

Then I installed this update and it told me my copy of Office is NOT genuine and it kept on bugging me about it. Searched online on how to manually remove it, I was successful in doing so. Then the update showed up again on Windows Update but I hid it. After a while, it just disappeared altogether. This was on my Vista install. When I upgraded to 7 and installed Office 2007 again, that update never showed up again.

So I personally suggest you hide it from your Windows Update and forget about it.

 

I personally install all updates, so I would install this one too. If it gives you trouble, which is rare but possible, just call MS and tell them to reactivate.

 

Trouble with this particular update has not been "rare". Many users with legitimate copies of Office have had trouble after installing this update, including being told by OGA that their copy of office was not genuine. My recommendation is to do what I did and hide the update. With Vista that's as simple as right-clicking on the update and selecting the hide option.

 

Thanks much to the users who responded to my thread and its queries. The users who recommended not installing the update (Nebelwand, Wolf04, and Yuyi64) easily made an irrefutable argument and I decided against installing the update. Although I did not articulate this, I had the proverbial feeling that this update had erroneously flagged genuine copies of the Office software as illegimate and was glad that my suspicion was borne out, and I was also surprised that these were not isolated events. I'm also glad Nebelwand reminded us that this update could not be removed after install; I think any software that is unremovable should not be installed regardless of what it does and this was the final factor that led me to forego installation.

As the respondents pointed out, one annoying issue was the constant reminder from Microsoft to install the update (as they do with all updates that go uninstalled). Admittedly I have installed some updates simply to avoid these reminders. Thanks much to Yuyi64 who showed how to hide the updates instead of installin them to silence the reminders.

Thanks again to the users who responded to my queries and provided invaluable information.

 

Like I said, I have the Enterprise Edition installed and got the update in Vista and it flagged my version not genuine. When I upgraded to 7 and installed Office 2007 Enterprise again, I never got the update again, which means it was a mistake on Microsoft's part.

A lot of Microsoft's Updates cannot be uninstalled after first installed. While this update cannot be uninstalled the normal way, there is a way to manually remove it if installed, which is how I did it.

 

I don't know if this is appropriate to post but here:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/...not-genuine-notifications-uninstall-kb949810/

I used "Hack 5".

Easy to uninstall. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\8998da55d52b36c0e98ba016ddd50de0\ folder.

Note: The directory may be different, so if not found search for OGANotifier.cab.
2. Extract OGANotifier.cab with WinRAR (or using the Expand command at command line) to get a file named OGANotifier.msi.
3. Right click on OGANotifier.msi, and select Uninstall.
4. Remember to block the update from been installed again in WU.


I don't know how to manually remove other updates since I never had problems with them but I'm sure a quick Google search will tell you how.

 

Thanks much--and point well taken about Google searching.