Use Vista without activation for 120 days (Instead of 30 days as pre-set)


It's widely assumed that a newly installed copy of Windows Vista must be "activated" before 30 days are up.

But Microsoft has built into Vista a simple, one-line command that anyone can use to extend the activation deadline of the product to a total of 120 days — almost four full months!

How to extend the Vista activation deadline

All versions of Vista allow a 30-day period without activation (except the corporate-oriented Vista Enterprise, which supports only a 3-day trial). If you know the secret, however, you can extend the activation deadline of editions such as Vista Home Premium and Vista Business up to four months past the original install date.

Among other things, slmgr.vbs has a function that pushes Vista's activation deadline out to 30 days from the date the command is run. From the Vista desktop, take the following steps on a machine on which Vista hasn't yet been activated:

Step 1. Open a command window with admin privileges. Click Vista's start button and type cmd into the Search box. Rather than pressing Enter, instead press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open the command window with elevated privileges. If you're asked for a username and password, provide the ones that log you into your domain. On a single-user copy of Vista, a login shouldn't be necessary. (My thanks to Serdar Yegulalp for the elevation trick.).

Step 2. Switch to the command-line shell handler. Running script commands in a window will result in irritating pop-up messages unless you change to the character-mode version of Windows Script Host. To do this, enter the following command at the prompt:

cscript /h:cscript

Step 3. Familiarize yourself with SLMGR. Executed with no parameters, slmgr displays a screen of help text. With the parameters -dli (display license information) or -xpr (expiration), the program displays the activation deadline, either in minutes remaining or as a date and time, respectively.

To see the effect of these commands, enter the following in the command window, one at a time:

slmgr
slmgr -dli
slmgr -xpr

If you've just installed Vista, the activation deadline will be 43,200 minutes in the future, which translates to 30 days. If Vista was installed some time ago, the remaining time shown will be less.

In my testing, each command required quite a long time to provide a response — as much as one minute. Be patient and wait for the results from each command before trying the next. If you didn't elevate your command window to have admin privileges in Step 1, you'll see only error messages.

Step 4. Extend Vista's activation deadline. The parameter -rearm changes the activation deadline to 30 days from today. SLMGR allows this extension to take place only three times. If you extend the deadline the day after you install Vista, you'll get an extension of only one day, not an additional 30 days.

The following command changes the activation deadline to 30 days after the command is invoked:

slmgr -rearm

If the operation worked, you should see the message, "Command completed successfully. Please restart the system for the changes to take effect."

It's not clear where SLMGR stores the number of times that it's been used to push the activation deadline back. If this number is stored in the Registry or in a system file, it's likely that hackers will quickly find a way to eliminate even the three-extension limit.

Step 5. Reboot and test. A reboot is required to make the extension take effect. After the Vista desktop loads, you should repeat steps 1 and 3 to check on your new activation deadline.

The 120-day extension trick shouldn't be confused with the Vista clean-install trick that I described in my Feb. 1 article. That procedure, which Microsoft also hard-coded into Vista, enables anyone to install the "upgrade" version of Vista over any running copy of Windows, even a just-clean-installed copy of Vista itself.

Microsoft's developers reportedly programmed the Vista upgrade process to test that it's running on any version of the OS — not just Windows XP, 2000, and other qualifying products — to make the coding process simpler.


Legitimate uses of the Software License Manager

Whatever the reasons for the until-now-secret features of Vista, the impact on Microsoft's revenue stream if people began using these features en masse could be enormous. Consider the following scenario:

1. A college buys a single, retail copy of Vista;

2. Using the clean-install trick, an admin installs the single DVD onto an unlimited number of PCs, such as in classrooms throughout the school;

3. Using the 120-day extension trick, the admin makes it unnecessary to activate the copies until the end of the academic quarter; and

4. At the end of the quarter, the hard drives are wiped clean and the same DVD is used to clean-install Vista on an unlimited number of PCs for the new quarter that's beginning.

This kind of mass duplication, of course, would clearly violate the Microsoft EULA. A school or company that installed this many copies of Vista from a single DVD would be wide open to an inspection by the Business Software Alliance, which obtains search warrants to conduct audits of machines companywide.

Despite the risks, however, many people around the world can and will use the built-in features of Vista to install as many copies of the operating system as they like.

Either Microsoft's Vista developers are totally incompetent, which I don't believe, or Microsoft officials at a high level are encouraging the introduction of these features, judging that the benefits outweigh the risks.

In any case, the Software Licensing Manager has several legitimate uses. Many of these are documented when you run slmgr at a prompt without parameters. I'll just touch on a few here:

• You can install a new product key by entering slmgr -ipk productkey;

• You can display the installation ID by entering slmgr -dti so you can activate Vista offline (without an Internet connection); and

• You can clear your product key from the Vista Registry by entering slmgr -cpky.

This last command is potentially an important security feature. There's no need for your product key to reside in the Registry once Vista activation is complete. It might be best to remove it, so it cannot be copied and sent to a hacker by a Trojan horse that might one day sneak onto your PC. I hope to print more detailed information about this in a future newsletter.

In addition to the above scenarios, there are many valid reasons for a Windows admin to extend the Vista activation date past its original 30-day limit. Companies that routinely build test PCs to try out various configurations, for instance, shouldn't have to buy a new copy of Vista every time a machine is wiped clean and rebuilt. A particular testing process might last more than 30 days, requiring an activation extension.

Using the 120-day extension in various scenarios

My testing shows that slmgr -rearm will extend Vista's activation deadline in all of the following situations:

1. A standard upgrade. If you installed Vista's upgrade version while running Windows XP or another qualifying product, this is the ordinary case. The extension works with no problems.

2. A clean-install of Vista. If you use my Feb. 1 clean-install trick to install Vista on a clean hard drive, the command also works with no problems. There's no need to first install the "upgrade" version of Vista on top of the clean-install of Vista before slmgr -rearm will extend the activation deadline.

3. An upgraded clean-install of Vista. If you've clean-installed Vista, and then upgraded Vista on top of itself, the slmgr -rearm command also works flawlessly to extend the deadline.