If you use Windows, do your best to avoid anything that requires a ping to WGA. That means you should stay away from patches and add-ons until the coast is clear. WGA will not reach out across the Internet and deactivate your copy of Windows, but you should avoid talking to a WGA server for any reason.

For those of you doing installations and upgrades this weekend, we recommend that you avoid activation at this time. Remember that you can run Windows legally for 30 days without activating.

If you attempt a validation and it fails, your install may be marked as non-genuine, which could lead to several annoyances. First things first, do not reboot a Windows machine that has been marked as non-genuine. Once you do so, you will lose functionality and the Aero interface. It would be best to wait until this problem has been resolved.

Hey, I never sweated WGA, it's never caused me a problem, and if MS want's to protect what they wrote, it's their right.  With all the yelling on the internet over how horrible WGA is, MS hasn't lost much market share and likely won't, not over WGA at least. (There are much better reasons to criticize MS than for WGA ).  And in the real world, it doesn't really affect the average user.

Then again, my copies are legal .