Now You Can Use Vista For A Year Without Activation

[azaad_shri75]

a good news for windows lovers, as now you can use vista for a year without any activation.

[hailgautam]

Shamelessly Copy/Pasted from: PCW

Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end run around one of Microsoft's key antipiracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said Thursday.

Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secret newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.

"The [activation] demands that Vista puts on corporate buyers is much more than on XP," said Livingston. "Vista developers have [apparently] programmed in back doors to get around time restrictions for Vista activation."

Microsoft Calls it a Hack

Microsoft promptly labeled the registry change a "hack," a loaded word that is usually synonymous with "illegal."

"Recently it has been reported that an activation hack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system has been identified," said David Lazar, the director of the company's Genuine Windows program, in an e-mail. "Although these reports are purely speculative at the moment, we are actively monitoring attempts to steal Microsoft intellectual property."

"This is not a hack," Livingston shot back when Lazar's e-mail was read to him. "This is a documented feature of the operating system." To back up his view, Livingston pointed out links to online support documents where Microsoft spells out the pertinent registry key. Nor is it speculative; Livingston demonstrated the procedure live via a Web conference session Thursday and claimed "we have run this dozens of times."

Postpone Activation

Livingston last month revealed that a one-line command lets users postpone Vista activation up to three times. Combined with Vista's initial 30-day grace period, that meant users could run Vista for as long as 120 days before they had to activate the OS. At the time, Microsoft seemed unconcerned with the disclosure, and flatly stated that using it would not violate the Vista End User License Agreement (EULA).

"The feature that I'm 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," Livingston said.

Microsoft documented the key on its support site in a description of what it calls "SkipRearm". In it, Microsoft explains that "rearming a computer restores the Windows system to the original licensing state. All licensing and registry data related to activation is either removed or reset. Any grace period timers are reset as well."

By changing the SkipRearm key's value from the default "0" to "1," said Livingston, the earlier-revealed "slmgr -rearm" command can be used over and over.

In tests with several editions of Vista purchased at different times, Livingston found that copies of Vista Ultimate and Vista Home Premium obtained at the end of January would accept the SkipRearm change only eight times. Together with the three postponements made possible with slmgr -rearm and the opening 30-day grace period, that would give users nearly a year (360 days) of activation-free use. A copy of Vista Home Basic bought March 14, however, ignored the SkipRearm registry change.

"Microsoft has slipstreamed something into Home Basic and Home Premium," Livingston said. "But from my reading of the support documents, Microsoft needs to keep this feature in its business editions, Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. It seems that Microsoft is sympathetic to enterprises' difficulty in rolling out Vista within the activation deadlines."

Lazar did not answer several questions e-mailed to him Thursday, including one that asked why Microsoft had included the SkipRearm feature in the first place. However, he indicated that the feature could be blocked if Microsoft desired. "It is important to note that these hacks are, at best, temporary. Microsoft has systems in place to detect and block piracy."

Activation Deadline Extensions

"This is somewhat of a threat to Microsoft," Livingston said. "But the extent to what it can retroactively patch, I don't know. Maybe they will want to change this. But that would only call more attention to activation, and perhaps reveal the mechanism Vista is using to count SkipRearm."

Livingston has not been able to find where Vista stores the SkipRearm count; conceivably, that count is what restricts its use to a maximum of eight. If someone was to find the count location, however, and manage to change that as well as the SkipRearm registry key, users might be able to postpone activation forever, said Livingston.

"The problem I see with this is that unscrupulous system builders will use it [to install counterfeit copies of Vista], but that Vista will start demanding activation a year or more out, when the guy is long gone with your money," said Livingston. "And then the activation key wouldn't work, because he would have used it on hundreds or even thousands of systems and Microsoft would have blocked it."
Background

Microsoft introduced product activation in 2001's Office XP and also used it in that year's Windows XP. Activation was toughened up for Vista, however; After the grace period, nonactivated PCs running Vista drop into what Microsoft calls "reduced functionality" mode. In reduced mode, users can only browse the Web with Internet Explorer, and then only for an hour before being forced to again log on.

Livingston's work-around, however, may do away with activation altogether. "[Activation] has become so convoluted, the way Microsoft has implemented it, that it's more of an irritation to legitimate users than a worthwhile antipiracy measure," Livingston concluded.

Naturally, Microsoft's Lazar sees it differently. "The new anti-piracy technologies in Windows Vista are designed to protect customers and prevent the software from working correctly when it is not genuine and properly licensed," he said. "Systems utilizing these hacks will not provide the benefits of genuine Windows, nor will they work as expected."

[krates]

What's In It Is Good I Am Using The Vista One Click Activator To Run It For Lifetime

[nik_for_you]

is it legal?

[navjotjsingh]

No source. No method. No talks whether its legal or not. Please lock this thread. Meaningless.

[mehulved]

Please provide a source for the news or else it will be locked.

[navjotjsingh]

I think it can be locked since proper news about this has been posted at http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52545 just 1 minute after this post.

[mehulved]

threads already merged while you were posting. hehe

[navjotjsingh]

Thanks..It was pretty fast.

[gxsaurav]

Knew this from last 3 weeks , but was not supposed to talk about it

[Josan]

Good Hack ....................!!!!!!!!

[goobimama]

Well I guess I won't have to pirate Vista then...running it legally for a year and then accidentally formatting my comp...even those four months is enough...

[Josan]

Plz buy Genuine Windows Products

[azaad_shri75]

great suggestion

[rajasekharan]

well well . . now i can run ms for a year , format , run again . yes , as posted earlier by others , even 4 months is enough .

[piyush gupta]

Yarr 1 yr is gud but vista

i need a serious thinking about installtaion

[gxsaurav]

Well, Vista is new. So if you are the type to disect your Vista installation then you will screw Vista in less then 4 months anyway.

[Ankur Mittal]

Here is how it works and it is legal but you won't be able to get the windows Updated so I prefer to use the original vista


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 120 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. Microsoft even documented the Registry key, although obtusely, on its Technet site.

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 — and failing — months or years later.

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. 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

Read ful, story and other tricks at source

News Source: bink.nu

[techtronic]

Thanks for the registry tuts

[goobimama]

I'm saving this tutorial before MS decides that its illegal...

[gxsaurav]

remove it, crack are not allowed here.

(PM It )

[*GandaBerunda*]

one year is more than enough activation time 4 me..i re-install windows every 3 months....

[ssdivisiongermany1933]

close the thread ,piracy going on

[Ankur Mittal]

Originally Posted by goobimama

I'm saving this tutorial before MS decides that its illegal...

It is not illegal,I have seen well reputed sites posting this article on their blogs.If anyone wants the proof than I can post the links to this article posted by them.

[alok4best]

I think according to Indian Copyright Laws..U cant distribute a protected stuff to everyone..However u can tweak it to ur needs(not explicitly said,but u can infer)..and here u r doing something to the registry to ur own windows...and off course u shud be allowed to do whatever u want to do with ur OS...Its totally upto me to decide what I want to do with my PC,and it shud not be illegal..

[sabret00the]

wow
__________
wow,so the 14 day activation no longer applies

[hailgautam]

Source: PCW

Microsoft says that a technique to delay Windows Vista's activation by as long as a year just "doesn't work”. The researcher who published the activation extension claimed otherwise.

"A quick analysis determined that this purported workaround doesn't work," said Alex Kochis, senior product manager of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), in an entry on the team's blog.

The blog has been Microsoft's sole public response thus far to reports last week of research published that day by Brian Livingston, the editor of the Windows Secrets newsletter. Livingston showed how a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement for an additional eight months.

Kochis also explained the purpose of ‘rearm’, another Vista command that lets users delay activation for an additional 90 days beyond the 30-day grace period. "Rearm is used to reset the activation grace period timer to 30 days as one of the final steps the builder of the image will perform," Kochis said. "Doing this enables the builder of the image to ensure the customer has the full 30-day period in which to activate."

Last month, Livingston detailed rearm, which has a built-in limitation of being called three times. Along with the 30-day grace period, rearm can push product activation out to as long as 120 days after the PC first boots. At the time, Microsoft seemed unconcerned with the disclosure and said that using it would not violate the Vista End User License Agreement (EULA).

Kochis went on to say that SkipRearm, along with rearm and another installation image building tool, dubbed ‘sysprep’, would not give the results Livingston claimed. "Skiprearm enables someone to run the sysprep command but without [emphasis in the original] actually using one of the three rearms," Kochis said. "[But] when the skiprearm bit is flipped, the rearm command can be used and will appear to succeed when it fact it is failing to extend the grace period timer."

Microsoft declined to make executives or developers of its WGA programme available for interviews to discuss or elaborate on their rejection of Livingston's findings.

Livingston, however, wasn't shy. "As far as I know, the SkipRearm key in the registry has no effect on changing the Vista activation deadline when used with Sysprep," he said. "I never said that Sysprep could extend Vista's activation deadline more than three times. Alex Kochis has simply demonstrated that something I didn't say is false."

Instead, Livingston said, he and his team tested ‘slmgr-rearm’ and SkipRearm combination on three different versions of Vista. "It worked on all of the versions except a Home Premium [edition of Vista] purchased in March 2007. We're guessing that the behaviour was slipstreamed out of Home but remains in business editions because it's needed by IT administrators," he said.

Tests clearly showed that SkipRearm and slmgr added eight additional months to Vista's activation delay, Livingston said. After taking an inactivated version of Vista through the process, Livingston ran slmgr to check the amount of time left before activation was required. "The value was repeatedly shown to be 43200 or 43199, indicating that the reboot had reset the value to 30 days," said Livingston.

The conflicting charges were confusing, and not just to outsiders.

"There are many features of Vista that are simply not documented well. SkipRearm is one of them," said Livingston. "Is it possible that there is some other interaction that affects these commands? Could the interval between multiple uses of SkipRearm affect whether or not it continues to work? Someone needs to test all five versions of Vista to find out."

In related news, one of the support documents cited by Livingston in his discussion of SkipRearm is now unavailable. Microsoft did not reply to questions on whether that document was pulled.

[Josan]

this thread must be closed ,,,,this forum is meant to learn something instead you guys are telling others that ''Dont worry following ......craks are available ''and job is over ..just search the web and you willl have these

[goobimama]

Worked for me! Thanks Ankur.

First attempt didn't work though (slmgr -rearm)...but the rundll.32 one worked.

[ax3]

so HACKING stuff is allowed here ......... good 2 hear it ..........

finally rules can b changed ............


following MATRIX movie ......... WOW ! ! !