Microsoft never fucked over their end users.

The initial versions of Windows activation in XP fucked over a fair number of people. Unlike activation now where the system still runs but puts a watermark on the screen, XP would lock you out of the system entirely after a certain period of time. Sometimes it would "lose" activation after some time and lock you out. And if you reinstalled Windows a few times on the same computer you might have to call their support people to have them reset something in the activation server.

Sounds a bit innocuous now in the era where this stuff is a lot more common, but back in the day it was pretty unusual for consumer-grade software to require that level of intrusion simply to license the product. That was the sort of thing you'd expect your $20,000 CAD software to do, not your $100 OS.

It took them a long time to get to the point they are today where not activating Windows is a minor annoyance at worst (most of my Windows installs I use for work I don't even bother activating even though i have valid licenses through MSDN)