Can Windows Vista activation be postponed indefinitely?

Posted on 16 March 2007


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.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get updates through email. Thanks for visiting!


3 Comments For This Post

  1. sameer says:

    I need help. I have bought sony notebook VGN-N21Z/W from Italy and the vista is installed in english. How I can convert the language of vista from italian to english.

  2. Suresh says:

    @Sameer - As much as I would like to give you a solution, I find that you have not mentioned which version of Vista is installed in your Notebook. So if you could let me know the Version, we could try to solve the issue.

  3. Suresh says:

    @Sameer: Check out the following two links. These should be able to solve your language issues.

    Change the display language
    Install a display language

Leave a Reply

  • Recent Comments:

  • Advertise Here
    Chitika Referral
    Performancing Hive
    Social Media Marketi

    Subscribe to Digital Quest


     Subscribe to Digital Quest via RSS


    Or, subscribe via email:

    Preview


    Choose Language

    English flagItalian flagKorean flagChinese (Simplified) flagPortuguese flagGerman flag
    French flagSpanish flagJapanese flagArabic flagRussian flagGreek flag
    Dutch flagBulgarian flagCzech flagCroat flagDanish flagFinnish flag
    Hindi flagPolish flagRumanian flagSwedish flagNorwegian flag 
    By N2H