here's the deal. in August, September of 2-3 years ago (I forget which), they just started locking computer. most of the program wouldn't work and the computer would act retarded. you couldn't reinstall windows on those computers as MS put something in the master boot record.
the problem arisen when they realized that they locked thousands of legit computer. they blame it on a virus and promptly unlock all of those computers.
then they started making a blacklist of certain keys. that wasn't working so good either because they were still locking some legit computers. then they started attacking known bootleg keys.
here was the problem. people started figuring out what MS was doing. MS was deny it at first, admit it, then deny it, then admit it, then deny it again.
I'm guessing that they aren't locking computers anymore. I did fix a computer at the beginning of this year, because it wouldn't log on because it had a bootleg key (it said something to this effect)