gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials » vista-activation http://www.ghacks.net A technology news blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:24:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Extend Vista Activation Period to 12 Monthshttp://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/15/extend-vista-activation-period-to-12-months/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/15/extend-vista-activation-period-to-12-months/#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:49:13 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/15/extend-vista-activation-period-to-12-months/ It is getting better and better. I was describing a method to extend the activation period of Windows Vista by 90 days to a total activation period of 120 days. But this is actually not the maximum that you can extend the activation period of Windows Vista. Ryan from Cybernet wrote a nice article today that explains how every Windows Vista user can extend the activation period by the factor three raising the total time until Windows Vista has to be activated to 360 days.

The first steps are basically the same as before. Run the command prompt as an administrator, you can do this by starting cmd and pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER. Type “slmgr -rearm” and hit return. The activation period will be reset to another 30 days after a reboot. To check if this procedure was successful you can type “slmgr -xpr” at the same command prompt after the reboot.

This was the usual way of extending the Windows Vista activation period from 30 to 120 days. We are now going to increase this period by the factor two again to have 360 days to activate Windows Vista. Open the registry with “regedit” and navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SL

Right-click the SkipRearm key and choose to modify it. Change the value to 1 and close regedit again. Start the command prompt as an administrator again and type “slmgr -rearm” again. Reboot the pc again and the Vista activation period was again reset to another 30 days. This can be done eight times.

To outline it again:

  • slmgr -rearm as an administrator in the Windows Vista command prompt (3 times)
  • change SkipRearm to 1 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SL
  • slmgr -rearm as an administrator in the Windows Vista command prompt (both 8 times)

This extends the Windows Vista activation period to 360 days.

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/15/extend-vista-activation-period-to-12-months/feed/ 11 How to bypass Vista activationhttp://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/13/how-to-bypass-vista-activation/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/13/how-to-bypass-vista-activation/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 08:23:53 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/13/how-to-bypass-vista-activation/ Imagine a race. A race between Microsoft and Crackers. Whenever Microsoft releases a new operating system that they say is absolutely secure and uncrackable some crackers find a way after days, weeks or even months. Vista was designed to be the first operating system that would not be copied en masse because of the way it had to be activated to function after a trial period. The first workarounds popped up pretty quickly buying time for the one real workaround to rule them all.

The weakness was first discovered by the famous (underground) group Paradox which discovered a way to emulate so called “Royality OEM2″ which require no activation at all. Those special OEM versions are only issued to major computer manufacturers such as Dell and Asus to take the hassle of activating the operating system away from their clients. These manufacturers embed license information into their hardware products which is equivalent to a online or phone registration.

This is called system-locked pre-installation 2.0 (SLP 2.0) and it consists of three key elements: (taken directly from the Paradox info file)

  • The OEM’s hardware-embedded BIOS ACPI_SLIC information signed by Microsoft.
  • A certificate issued by Microsoft that corresponds to the specific ACPI_SLIC information.
  • A special type of product key that corresponds to the installed edition of Windows Vista.


“If all three elements match Windows Vista’s licensing mechanism considers the given installation a valid system-locked pre-activated copy (that does not require any additional product activation procedures).”

Which means they had to create a tool that would emulate an SLP 2.0 system fulfilling all three key elements. This process introduced by Paradox could be described as rather complex for the average user.

Thankfully a group called Clony created a one click activation from this information. The process would be the following:

  • Install RTM or Retail Vista without product key
  • Execute a single file and follow the instructions
  • Reboot Windows Vista

Now this does not sound complicated at all, does it ? In case you are wondering where to get those activation files. I do not want to link directly to them because it could mean serious trouble.

Please rest assured that this method to bypass Vista activation does not tinker with your bios at all. It is a pure software emulation of a OEM bios.

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/13/how-to-bypass-vista-activation/feed/ 8 Extend the Vista activation periodhttp://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/03/extend-the-vista-activation-period/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/03/extend-the-vista-activation-period/#comments Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:49:11 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/03/extend-the-vista-activation-period/ Did you know that it is possible to extend the 30 day evaluation period of Windows Vista to a maximum of 120 days with a single command from the command line ? You can use the following command to reset the counter up to three times to use Vista for a period of up to 120 days without activating it.

Open the command line by hitting Windows + R, typing cmd and pressing enter. Use the -rearm option of the file Slmgr.vbs to extend the period, the command would look like this: Slmgr.vbs -rearm ; This if of course not the real deal but should be helpful if you have no time to activate Vista in the first 30 days.

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