If you think about it shipping machines that crash all the time is a pretty good anti-piracy feature.

What I mean is, to get a game to run (even a legal one) you have to run an update, now to get the update you have to have a legal machine as the update checks what you have on your HD and BIOS and will only update a fully legal machine, or what M$ sees as a legal machine. Pretty Simple.

It's this exact same thing that has forced me to shell out for a full copy of XP MCE to run my Mame Box, I can't get the new remote/keyboard to work without running a live update, and that won't run unless I have legal copy. Very smart Microsoft, it simply isn't worth the hasstle for me to run anything but a legal copy anymore.

Cheers

Cris.