View more articles by Jimmy S. The Conversation Follow the reactions below and share your own thoughts. Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Apple Mac iPhone. To regain full use of Windows Vista, you must activate it. Note While activation for Windows Vista is still available through the online and automated phone system methods, assisted support for Windows Vista is no longer available.
This includes assisted support for activation issues. To activate your copy of Windows Vista, you may need your valid product key. Note If Windows Vista was preinstalled by an original equipment manufacturer OEM , the product key appears on a sticker on the case of the computer.
To activate Windows Vista online, you must have an Internet connection. To activate Windows Vista by telephone, you must use the automated telephone system.
To activate Windows Vista, follow these steps:. Click Start , and then click Computer. Windows Secrets Newsletter? Issue ? But the Redmond company has made things a lot easier for pirates by adding a line to the Registry that can be changed from 0 to 1 to postpone the need to "activate" Vista indefinitely. Activation doesn't stop true software piracy As most Windows users know, Microsoft has required "product activation" since the release of Windows XP in XP must be activated by communicating with servers in Redmond within 30 days of installation.
If a PC has no Internet connection, a user may activate a product by dialing a telephone number in various countries. The activation process will complete successfully only if the software has not been previously activated, such as on a different machine.
If activation isn't completed within the trial period, Microsoft products temporarily shut down some of their features. MS Office loses the ability to edit and save files. After Vista's activation deadline runs out, the user can do little other than use Internet Explorer to activate the operating system or buy a new license. Microsoft describes its product activation scheme as a way to foil software pirates. Far from stopping software piracy, product activation has primarily been designed to prevent home users from installing one copy of Windows on a home machine and a personal-use copy on a laptop.
As I explained in an article on Mar. Copyright Act and the copyright laws of many other countries. For example, courts have repeatedly ruled that consumers can make copies of copyrighted songs or television programs for personal use not for distribution or resale. This principle is legally known as "fair use. Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, however, allow only one activation.
Surprisingly, Microsoft has embedded into its new Vista operating system a feature that makes things easier than ever for true, mass software pirates.
These tricksters will be able to produce thousands of Windows PCs machines that won't demand activation indefinitely? Leaving the activation barn door open I reported in a Feb. The new Microsoft operating system completely omits any checking for a qualifying previous version of Windows. This allows the upgrade version of Vista to successfully upgrade over a nonactivated, trial version of itself.
He flatly states, "You satisfied every condition of the license agreement and aren't skating by on a technicality. The fact that you have to use a kludgey workaround to use the license you've purchased and are legally entitled to is Microsoft's fault. I wrote a follow-up story on Feb. I reported that Microsoft includes in Vista a one-line command that even novices can use to postpone the product's activation deadline three times.
This can extend the deadline from its original 30 days to as much as days? The magazine quotes a Microsoft spokeswoman as saying that extending Vista's activation deadline as I described it "is not a violation of the Vista End User License Agreement.
The feature that I've revealing today shows that Microsoft has built into Vista a function that allows anyone to extend the operating system's activation deadline not just three times, but many times. The same one-line command that postpones Vista's activation deadline to days can be used an indefinite number of times by first changing a Registry key from 0 to 1.
This isn't a hacker exploit. It doesn't require any tools or utilities whatsoever. But dishonest PC sellers could use the procedure to install thousands of copies of Vista and sell them to unsuspecting consumers or businesses as legitimately activated copies.
This would certainly violate the Vista EULA, but consumers might not realize this until the PCs they bought started demanding activation? The following describes the Registry key that's involved. Step 1. While running a copy of Windows Vista that hasn't yet been activated, click the Start button, type regedit into the Search box, then press Enter to launch the Registry Editor. Step 2. Right-click the Registry key named SkipRearm and click Edit. The default is a Dword a double word or 4 bytes with a hex value of Change this value to any positive integer, such as , save the change, and close the Registry Editor.
Step 4. Start a command prompt with administrative rights. If you're asked for a network username and password, provide the ones that log you into your domain. You may be asked to approve a User Account Control prompt and to provide an administrator password.
Step 5. Type one of the following two commands and press Enter: slmgr -rearm or rundll32 slc. Running either command initializes the value of SkipRearm back to 0. Step 6. Reboot the PC to make the postponement take effect. After you log in, if you like, you can open a command prompt and run the command slmgr -xpr to see Vista's new expiration date and time. I explained the slmgr command and its parameters in my Feb.
Step 7. To extend the activation deadline of Vista indefinitely, repeat steps 1 through 6 as necessary. Any crooked PC seller with even the slightest technical skill could easily install a command file that would carry out steps 1 through 6 automatically. The program could run slmgr -rearm three times, 30 days apart, to postpone Vista's activation deadline to days.
It could then run skip -rearm every 30 days, for a period of months if not years, by first resetting the SkipRearm key. Install Windows Vista Ultimate edition or other edition without product key, if possible in year You may need to disconnect from Internet while applying the patch. Windows Vista needs to be applied with ReArm trick , so that the counter of minutes to no activation required period will not return to normal after reboot.
Try the following normal procedures to rearm Vista at Click on Start Orb button. In the command prompt, type date and press Enter. Success rate in bit x64 environment is likely to be low. The crack will make the time left to activate Vista to become always minutes 30 days , and will not countdown or reduce. After crack, Vista OS will always run with 30 days left for activation, thus there will not be any watermark or reminder to activate.
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