In an earlier post, I had written about how you can continue to use Windows Vista without activation upto 120 days. But now it looks like that 120 days can become 360 days or even indefinite.

And unbelievably, you can do it with just a little tweak to the Registry. This workaround was discovered by Windows expert Brian Livingston. This isn’t a hacker exploit. It doesn’t require any tools or utilities whatsoever. All it involves is changing a Registry Key called SkipRearm from its default its value of ‘00000000′ to any positive integer like ‘00000001′. Once you have done that you can use slmgr -rearm at the command prompt to postpone the activation by 30 days as described in my earlier post. You can postpone activation 3 more time now. In other words everytime you reset the SkipRearm key in the Registry, you can user slmgr -rearm 3 times.

You can find more about this here.

Looks like Microsoft has labeled this method a hack, a term usually used to mean changing something illegally.

But I don’t understand why SkipRearm even exists in the first place.

If it is offered it will be taken.

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All versions of Vista allow a 30-day period without activation, except the corporate-oriented Vista Enterprise, which supports only a three-day trial.

But there is a way to extend the trial period from 30 days to as much as 120 days. A very simple way.

Just start a new command prompt and type:

slmgr -rearm

Reboot your pc and you will have 30 more days to play with your Vista. However, you can extend the grace period only 3 times, which means you can use Vista for upto 120 days without activation.

If you are wondering if the above method is legal, stop worrying. Using the above command to extend the grace period is not a violation of the Vista End User License Agreement (EULA). This has been confirmed by a Microsoft spokeswoman.