Extending The Windows Vista Grace Period to 120 Days

[cro-man]

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. 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.

[NIM]

Thanks Cro-man, I've posted this on the frontpage about a week ago http://www.wincert.net/index.php?option=co...1&Itemid=39, but not all of the WinCert.net members read the frontpage news, so it's good that you've posted it here..

All versions of Vista allow a 30-day period without activation, except the corporate-oriented Vista Enterprise, which supports only a three-day trial. With "slmgr -rearm" command, you can extend the activation deadline of editions such as Vista Home Premium and Vista Business up to four months past the original install date." The one-line command of "slmgr -rearm" changes the activation deadline to 30 after the current date. So this means that you can't extend the activation deadline for "strongest" version of Vista (Ultimate) to 120 days. Apparently "rearm" command can be run up to three times, extending the Vista Home Premium and Vista Bussines activation deadline to maximum of 120 days..

It's good to notice that extending the grace period is not a violation of the Vista End User License Agreement (EULA), according to Microsoft.

Some critics have argued that the new activation rules and reduced functionality combine to make what's essentially a "kill switch" -- a way for Microsoft to disable PCs running counterfeit copies of Vista. Microsoft has repeatedly rejected that characterization.

[MrNxDmX]

Thanks very much for the info mate's.