How to: Postpone Vista activation for a year

November 28th, 2007 |Ajay M | 40,883 views | Tips and tricks, Tutorials, Windows Vista | Comments (27)

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With the release of Windows XP in 2001 Microsoft implemented a technology called Microsoft Product Activation (MPA). According to Microsoft this was developed to combat software piracy. But it has never lived upto Microsoft’s expectation. After you install Windows XP (or Windows Vista) you need to activate it within 30 days, failing doing that it will become dysfunctional. Where as in Microsoft Office product the activation should be done within first 50 launch of the program. Most of the piracy of Windows XP took place from the Volume License key of Windows XP provided to corporate, who just needs only one key to install and activate thousands of Windows XP. So in vista this technique was modified and a cumbersome technology called Volume Licensing 2.0 which required to set up a “Key Management Service” (KMS). But it places a heavy burden to Corporate hence Microsoft developers invented a registry key (”skiprearm”) that helps to corporate IT administrators to reduce this burden.

Brian Livingstone of windowssecrets has demonstrated this simple registry hack by exploiting the skiprearm and a simple command to extend the Vista Activation requirement to almost a year.

Here is the step by step instruction:

Step 1. In Windows Vista

that hasn’t yet been activated, click the Start button, type ‘regedit’ without quote into the Search box, then press Enter to launch the Registry Editor.

Step 2. Explore down to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SL

Step 3. 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 00000000. Change this value to any positive integer, such as 00000001, save the change, and close the Registry Editor.

Step 4. Start a command prompt with administrative rights. The fastest way to do this is to click the Start button, enter cmd in the Search box, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. 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.dll,SLReArmWindows

Either command uses Vista’s built-in Software Licensing Manager (SLMGR) to push the activation deadline out to 30 days after the command is run. Changing SkipRearm from 0 to 1 allows SLMGR to do this an indefinite number of times. 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. 15 article.)

Step 7. To extend the activation deadline of Vista indefinitely, repeat steps 1 through 6 as necessary.

You can find the full article in Brian’s news letter in his website.

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Comment by cirtex on 3 December 2007:

that s a nice hack to postpone vista .
i m a Mac fan havent turned up to PC yet

my grandmother is using windows , will help her out

Comment by RaIdo XM on 7 December 2007:

Pretty cool trick. How did you learn this?

Comment by Dunkan Wells on 7 December 2007:

Microsoft having this simple hack, still unfixed is understandable!!

Comment by take off zone on 11 December 2007:

I’m wondering what the advantage of postponing the activation date of the OS would be? One needs to activate it in order to gain full control of its features. I’m satisfied with XP, no need to switch to Vista for many years to come…

Comment by Ajay M on 11 December 2007:

@ Take off

When you install Vista you can use it like a full version with all functionality for a month i.e for 30 days. After that if you do not activate then it will go to a reduced functionality mode. Hoe that answers your doubt.

Comment by USC Trojan Fan on 12 December 2007:

Do you think that during that time Microsoft will release a big fix much like Service Pack 1 & 2 for XP?

Comment by Ajay M on 13 December 2007:

Yes, Microsoft is going to release SP1 for Vista very soon.

Comment by Nasir on 14 December 2007:

Nice article!
I am going to give it a try.

Comment by marvin nubwaxer on 14 December 2007:

my vista ultimate running on virtual pc has been running and activated for about 4 months. unfortunately i have forgotten whose hack or crack i used to do it.

Comment by moregadget on 20 December 2007:

nice one, I’ll give it the shoot right away, but actually, in daily basis, I still prefer to use my old XP, since Its already familiar to me, and I think the new Vista bring a lot of new feature which make me to learn to use it again… which I don’t have spare time to do it.. but in the future, who knows?

Comment by Ajay M on 22 December 2007:

When we compare Xp to Vista ….XP is not at all at par wth vista based on the security enhance ment and UI enhancement. When XP came to market in 2002 everybody was afraid of using XP as they were used to using 98. And now it is similar situation wth vista.

Comment by giovanni on 25 December 2007:

i prefer xp but this guide is useful
thank,diridea.com from italy

Comment by Davi on 3 February 2008:

I have been using XP since time last month one of my friend told me to install Vista system instead of XP because its faster and smoother than XP. I bought Vista system but i tell you it sucks….They say why amend it if its not broken i should have stayed with XP.

I have no idea why Vista run so slow and when you install games they hardly work when all of them would work fine on XP.

Nice healthy post though.

Regards

Comment by city on 16 February 2008:

Thanks for the hack. I am going to try this on my new vista. Hopefully Microsoft didn’t patch this in SP1.

Pingback by Most Popular posts at a glance | Techie Zone on 18 February 2008:

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Comment by Laveranues Pedigree on 28 February 2008:

Vista is so bad. They spend so much time and money and that’s what they come up with?

Comment by reviewlutions on 16 March 2008:

nice tips.. LOL wonder bill will less rich if every one use this trick..
well, I never bought the OEM version since windows 3.11 and bill still at the top list of richest man in the world… so why bother LOL

Comment by Slick on 16 March 2008:

Vista is worst OS! XP is better

Comment by Jack on 24 March 2008:

Great find. How did you find out about this? Lets hope it still works after service pack one?

Comment by get camping on 31 March 2008:

Aghh Vista, the bain of my life. There are so many little issues with it. Give me back XP anytime.

Nice post to help people out.

Comment by Money Management on 11 May 2008:

Cool, but you can permanently postpone Vista by buying a Mac!

Comment by Joe Takkle on 29 May 2008:

Neat little trick. This could hold out most of us who decide to use this till Windows 7 comes out. Then again their is a reason Vista has low piracy numbers, maybe because the people who doing all the piracy realize its not worth the ‘upgrade’ -=O
None the less great tip for people who need a quick fix.

Comment by 5000+ free games on 6 June 2008:

Microsoft has been doing this for a long time of course. Their licensing has always been a nightmare.

Comment by optimize your pc on 12 June 2008:

I was using windows XP since last 4-5 years. Now , I have installed Vista. Its graphics are very good but I have faced one problem that it demands me regular updates.