Windows 7 Beta keys are not unique

Yesterday was a long day for those trying to get a Windows 7 beta key. Microsoft’s website was getting hammered with huge volumes of traffic — most likely due to the fact that so many people were constantly refreshing pages in hopes of getting a key. I had ignored the initial rush of traffic and was lucky enough to get a beta key within 5 minutes of trying.

This is where things get interesting. Today, it seems beta keys are abundant. In fact, if you refresh the same page (after logging in to technet of course) over and over again, you will get a different key each time. But the thing is, these keys aren’t unique. Doing a quick search on Google, I was able to find all 5 of the beta keys I requested today (all Windows 7 x64 keys):

• D9RHV-JG8XC-C77H2-3YF6D-RYRJ9
• 482XP-6J9WR-4JXT3-VBPP6-FQF4M
• JYDV8-H8VXG-74RPT-6BJPB-X42V4
• RFFTV-J6K7W-MHBQJ-XYMMJ-Q8DCH
• 7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3

However, interestingly enough, the beta key I was given yesterday did not turn up any results at all. And it isn’t just me — Neowin forum users are also reporting the same thing. So it appears that Microsoft made a decision sometime between last night and today to switch from using unique keys to giving out duplicates, which according to reports, still activate just fine. This move obviously has something to do with the huge volume of traffic they received yesterday, but the exact reasoning behind it is not known.