Techie World

The concept of “activation” has become familiar to computer users ever since Microsoft introduced it into the licensing for Windows XP.

After installing Windows, you have a 30-day “trial period” to either activate the product or let it lose some functionality. You can activate XP or Vista by allowing the software to contact Microsoft’s servers via your Internet connection. Or, if you’re paranoid about an automated session of this kind, you can call a phone number in various countries to receive a code to enter on your keyboard.

An activated copy of Windows is “locked” to the specific configuration that was present at activation time ? motherboard, hard drive, and so forth. Changing several components, such as during a hardware upgrade, can cause Windows to complain, saying it requires reactivation.

Microsoft seems to be liberal about providing new activation codes to anyone who calls the telephone number and provides a plausible explanation. (My hard disk needed replacing, etc.) Don’t be afraid to try calling if a copy of Windows ever needs reactivation.

All versions of Vista allow a 30-day period without activation (except the corporate-oriented Vista Enterprise, which supports only a 3-day trial). If you know the secret, however, 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.

Microsoft provides a command-line program in Vista known as the Software Licensing Manager (SLMGR) or slmgr.vbs.This is a Visual Basic script that resides in c:\windows\system32. You can read the contents of this script file with any text editor or a professional development environment.

Among other things, slmgr.vbs has a function that pushes Vista’s activation deadline out to 30 days from the date the command is run. From the Vista desktop, take the following steps on a machine on which Vista hasn’t yet been activated:

Step 1. Open a command window with admin privileges. Click Vista’s start button and type cmd into the Search box. Rather than pressing Enter, instead press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open the command window with elevated privileges. If you’re asked for a username and password, provide the ones that log you into your domain. On a single-user copy of Vista, a login shouldn’t be necessary. (My thanks to Serdar Yegulalp for the elevation trick.).

Step 2. Switch to the command-line shell handler. Running script commands in a window will result in irritating pop-up messages unless you change to the character-mode version of Windows Script Host. To do this, enter the following command at the prompt:

cscript /h:cscript

Step 3. Familiarize yourself with SLMGR. Executed with no parameters, slmgr displays a screen of help text. With the parameters -dli (display license information) or -xpr (expiration), the program displays the activation deadline, either in minutes remaining or as a date and time, respectively.

To see the effect of these commands, enter the following in the command window, one at a time:

slmgr
slmgr -dli
slmgr -xpr

If you’ve just installed Vista, the activation deadline will be 43,200 minutes in the future, which translates to 30 days. If Vista was installed some time ago, the remaining time shown will be less.

In my testing, each command required quite a long time to provide a response ? as much as one minute. Be patient and wait for the results from each command before trying the next. If you didn’t elevate your command window to have admin privileges in Step 1, you’ll see only error messages.

Step 4. Extend Vista’s activation deadline. The parameter -rearm changes the activation deadline to 30 days from today. SLMGR allows this extension to take place only three times. If you extend the deadline the day after you install Vista, you’ll get an extension of only one day, not an additional 30 days.

The following command changes the activation deadline to 30 days after the command is invoked:

slmgr -rearm

If the operation worked, you should see the message, “Command completed successfully. Please restart the system for the changes to take effect.”

It’s not clear where SLMGR stores the number of times that it’s been used to push the activation deadline back. If this number is stored in the Registry or in a system file, it’s likely that hackers will quickly find a way to eliminate even the three-extension limit.

Step 5. Reboot and test. A reboot is required to make the extension take effect. After the Vista desktop loads, you should repeat steps 1 and 3 to check on your new activation deadline.