Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Van Stephen Lanning

Ning Zhang

Aaron Edward Dietrich

Egor Nikitin

Sylvain Goyette

Ramprabhu Rathnam

Techniques for conducting an automated analysis of operations carried out during the critical path for a usage scenario and suggesting ways in which the configuration of the computing device could be changed to affect performance of the computing device. Computing devices can be operated in a variety of usage scenarios and users may notice the performance of a computing device in certain usage scenarios more particularly. Critical path analysis of operations conducted in these usage scenarios can be used to identify a critical path of the usage scenario, from which changes that could be made to the computing device to affect performance could be identified. Once the changes that could be made are identified, suggestions can be made to the user, such that a user is able to make changes to the configuration to affect performance when the user has little knowledge about how to improve configurations.

Analyzing performance of computing devices in usage scenarios

The product keys of software applications that can be utilized to identify, and activate to a higher functional state, legitimate copies of such software applications can be asymmetrically encrypted. Such encrypted product keys can be provided to potential purchasers without fear of theft of the original product keys. The encrypted product keys can be provided to an independent, trusted third-party validation authority that can decrypt such encrypted product keys and can, such as in conjunction with the software application manufacturer, verify the validity of the software applications associated with such product keys. For software applications bundled on a computing device, a tool can be executed by either the seller or potential purchaser to collect and display encrypted product keys for verification purposes. For software applications sold in an online environment, an escrow service can be utilized to keep, and provide when requested, product keys of software applications offered for sale.

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Van Stephen Lanning