I found myself needing to download Virtual PC from Microsoft recently to test an application. I have a bonafide copy of windows, but my enterprise anti-virus won’t let me run WGA. No problem, we’ll just snoop around the MS site.
The following modal keeps prompting an ineffective download of WGA.
However, let’s fire up Chrome and look at the html in the page.
Hmm, check out the div GenuineCheck_Validated_Successful. I bet there is a link in it. So let’s check inside. Bingo!
onclick="OnGenuineCheck_ContinueDownloadVPC_Button_Clicked(); return false;"
And here we are, just run this javascript at the console for the page and the download will start right up, without WGA!
OnGenuineCheck_ContinueDownloadVPC_Button_Clicked()
Wow, that was easy. Now, if MS had really cared to keep us out, they could have worked harder, but then we’d have to work harder too to get around it. Thanks MS!