Microsoft latest add-on for Windows XP, Plus! Digital Media Edition, has fallen foul of Windows Product Activation. Numerous purchasers are finding it impossible to install, and are being confronted by the comforting message "Plus! Digital Media Edition uses Microsoft Product Activation to help prevent software piracy. Please have an administrator run Plus! Digital Media Edition on this machine and go through the Microsoft Plus! Product Activation Wizard. Once that is complete, you will be able to run Plus! Digital Media Edition normally."

Except, er, no you won't. Other users report an installation failure with "Error 2700." Numerous problems with DME are reported here, but the activation failure is pretty common, and Microsoft's techies concede it's a problem they don't yet have a fix for.

As one writes: "Unfortunately, we have users seeing this problem on both Windows XP
Professional and Windows XP Home Edition computers. As I said in another post, we're actively trying to find out what's causing this issue. One potential problem is that the registry permissions on the machine are not valid and we cannot write to the registry keys we expect." So he proposes a registry hack as a possible workaround.

Plus! DME is currently only available as an online purchase, although it will be out on CD shortly, and it can also currently only be purchased with a US credit card. But Microsoft goofed with the rollout promotion, and forgot to mention to signers up that it was only valid in the USA. It will be available from online retailers outside of the US soon, say the ever apologetic support people. ®