Why can’t I remove “for test/evaluation purposes only”?

Date:August 12, 2003 / year-entry #20
Tags:history
Orig Link:https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030812-00/?p=42923
Comments:    3
Summary:"Why can't I remove 'for test/evaluation purposes only'? I know I'm running an evaluation edition, I don't need it rubbed in my face." This prevents unscrupulous OEMs from selling machines with the evaluation edition of the product instead of the retail version. (Yes, this has happened before. Many times.) The "For test purposes only" tag...

"Why can't I remove 'for test/evaluation purposes only'? I know I'm running an evaluation edition, I don't need it rubbed in my face."

This prevents unscrupulous OEMs from selling machines with the evaluation edition of the product instead of the retail version. (Yes, this has happened before. Many times.)

The "For test purposes only" tag prevents unscrupulous OEMs from selling machines with uncertified drivers. (Driver-cheating has been a big problem, especially video drivers, since... well... forever. Those of you who are gamers know all about driver cheating.) To install an uncertified driver without a warning prompt, you need to install the test root certificate. The presence of the test root certificate causes the "For test purposes only" tag to appear.

We have also had many cases of corporate customers (and technology reporters!) who have had machines expire because they had forgotten that they were running the evaluation edition.  When the machines expire on them, they are stuck with thousands of machines that don't work. This makes them extremely upset.


Comments (3)
  1. Sigverif looks for files that aren’t digitally signed.

  2. I’m not sure what these people are thinking.

  3. I’m not sure what these people are thinking.

Comments are closed.


*DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THIS CONTENT. If you are the owner and would like it removed, please contact me. The content herein is an archived reproduction of entries from Raymond Chen's "Old New Thing" Blog (most recent link is here). It may have slight formatting modifications for consistency and to improve readability.

WHY DID I DUPLICATE THIS CONTENT HERE? Let me first say this site has never had anything to sell and has never shown ads of any kind. I have nothing monetarily to gain by duplicating content here. Because I had made my own local copy of this content throughout the years, for ease of using tools like grep, I decided to put it online after I discovered some of the original content previously and publicly available, had disappeared approximately early to mid 2019. At the same time, I present the content in an easily accessible theme-agnostic way.

The information provided by Raymond's blog is, for all practical purposes, more authoritative on Windows Development than Microsoft's own MSDN documentation and should be considered supplemental reading to that documentation. The wealth of missing details provided by this blog that Microsoft could not or did not document about Windows over the years is vital enough, many would agree an online "backup" of these details is a necessary endeavor. Specifics include:

<-- Back to Old New Thing Archive Index