Saturday, May 03, 2008

What to Do When Your MSDN is Stolen

So, when I was terminated from my last position, I had the option of immediately retrieving my personal effects or of getting them later. I chose later to avoid turmoil. All of my effects were boxed up almost immediately and shipped to my home a few weeks later.

About 2 weeks ago I needed a SQL Server disk and went into the box that was shipped. My MSDN binder was not there.

I had a year-long MSDN subscription, courtesy of an MVP award to my friend Cathy Pountney, that expired last year but I had all of the critical disks - Vista, VS 2005, and Office 2007. I kept the binder and disks at work since I was constantly creating virtual machines for testing and the company's copies were not always available.

My first few inquiries to my former employer were not answered and, finally, they performed a search for the binder and could not locate it. Since they are a secure facility I don't have the option of looking myself.

I am left in a bit of a spot. I could report the missing disks to MS and as the regcodes are unique (I think, for the big stuff) perhaps they could invalidate them.

If I do this and the subscription disks were stolen, it'd be the right thing to do. If the disks were inadvertantly mixed in with the company's own subscriptions then it could cause them problems and I don't really want to do that.

What to do?

3 comments:

Cathy Pountney said...

Hmmm .. that's a tough position to be in. I guess as a last resort, you should be able to download everything from the MSDN website. I've heard that even though a subscription has expired, you still have the legal right to access everything that was on your disks. Of course, theory and practicality may be 2 different things and you may have to jump through a lot of hoops and sit a lot of phone calls with MSDN to make that happen.

I still have that "Invite" number if you need that to prove to MSDN that you have the subscription.

Gonzo said...

They (MSDN) have policy that once the subscription has expired you can't get replacements. Oh well, at least they were capable of blocking activation so that whomever absconded with the disks can't use most of them.

Cathy Pountney said...

Hey John .. send me an email about this issue. I have a solution for you. I sent an email to you but I'm not sure it's the right email address now that you've moved on.