Extending The Windows Vista Grace Period to 120 Days
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 1.2.2007
If you're on the fence about the impending release of Windows Vista, I recommend trying before you buy. Every Vista DVD includes
the ability to install any edition of Vista without a product key. When you install without a product key, you get an automatic 30 day evaluation period.* This probably isn't news to anyone.
What may be news to you, however, is that
you can easily extend the 30-day Windows Vista grace period to 120 days. No hacks required. This is an official, supported operation directly from Microsoft.
To extend the grace period another 30 days, simply start a command prompt as Administrator, and issue this command:
slmgr -rearm
Reboot for the change to take effect, and voila, you have 30 more days. You can only extend three times, so the total grace period for a Vista evaluation is 120 days. You do, however, need to be careful that you've installed the correct edition of Vista. At the end of that 120 day grace period, you'll have to pony up a license fee for the edition of Vista you've installed. Now that the OEM editions are out, the pricing breaks down like so, at least at Newegg:
- Vista Home Basic OEM - $100
- Vista Home Premium OEM - $120
- Vista Business OEM - $150
- Vista Ultimate OEM - $200
Microsoft is semi-officially supporting the OEM versions for resale to end users, but the bad news is that there's not much savings at the low-end. The pricing for the basic OEM editions are nearly identical to the full retail upgrades. The primary difference is that the OEM copies will support full install as well as upgrade install. If you're looking for deeper Vista discounts, you may be interested in the Vista Family Pack, which includes the option to buy two $49 copies of Vista Home Premium, provided you pay full retail price for a copy of Vista Ultimate.
Now that we've gotten the sticky matter of pricing out of the way, let's take a deeper look at this little utility Microsoft provides. It's actually a Windows Script Host file, slmgr.vbs. First, let's switch our default WSH handler to the command-line version so we aren't dealing with aggravating window popups from the command line.
cscript /H:Cscript
If you run slmgr without any parameters, you'll get the help.
source: codinghorror
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Comments(13)
sound great! we'd definitely try and see if...
many thanks indeed for such valuable
information...
if you're a professional enthusiast, you don't even need to crack the same, anymore.
this is old news been around since release of rtm version but good for those who missed out
this may be old news but i for one didn't know about this so i'm glad and will take advantage of this
valuable information.
thanks again,
huskieguy731
use this registry hack to modify the rearm count (number of times the required activation flag and grace
period has been reset or extended1. open registry editor.
2. navigate to the following registry key:
hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\sl
3. edit the registry subkey
of “skiprearm” (you should see current value as dword:00000000) and set the
“skiprearm” value to any positive integer (such as 1).
4. open command prompt with
administrative rights.
5. type “slmgr -rearm” or “rundll32
slc.dll,slrearmwindows”.
6. restart computer. you should now has a fresh 30-day of trial period on
windows vista, which by end of 30-days time bomb, you can repeat the procedures again to skip vista
activation.
you saying by changing "shiprearm" dword value from 0 to 1, there is no limit to how many times we can
rearm?
"unlimited re-arm" only works for five re-arms!.. trust me i know...
yes "by changing "shiprearm" dword value from 0 to 1, there is no limit to how many times we can rearm"
i've tryed it myself !!! just try it yourself and see thjat it works !!! cheers !!!
it works... thanks!
it looks like the "unlimited rearm" works great!
thanks a lot! :-)
this is a very polite crack...
if we can consider it a crack.
sorry... the rearm in not unlimited... :-(
while it does say 30 days under the computer properties now. under the slmgr.vbs -dlv it
still shows the minutes and days to be counting down!!
just when is 2 or 3 days left use this re-arm trick and you can use it forever( i am not
realy sure because i tryed this one time)
ps sry for my bad english :)
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Extending The Windows Vista Grace Period to 120 Days
By Maxman on 01.02.2007 - 09:02