Message box appears saying I may be a victim of counterfeit software

gregrocker · 25 Dec 2013

Is your Win7 activated at bottom of Computer>Properties page?

rzn6jw · 26 Dec 2013

Yes, it is. Still, since I have never had this message appear before, I wonder if it's Microsoft that posting it or something else.

Anyway, everything seems OK with the system and no erroneous programs are trying to install. Will keep an eye on it though.

Thanks again for all the replies and help!

NoelDP · 27 Dec 2013

Such race conditions as you have are nor all that unusual - they are normally caused by AV conflicting with the SPPSVC, but can be caused by pretty much any processor-intensive process during the boot. It's almost impossible to isolate the actual conflict as merely looking for it changes the conditions sufficiently that it is less likely to occur.
It can happen as a result of some third-party 'system tools' doing a 'cleanup' on the drive and deleting the boot optimisation records - this results in Windows having to re-learn the boot process, and the order in which it starts non-kernel processes.
It usually settles down after a few reboots, and isn't seen again for months (if ever).