Despite being the most advanced version of Windows yet,
Vista allows surprising freedom for casual pirates to run unauthorized copies
of the new operating system. Last month, DailyTech
detailed a procedure in which a user may extend his activation grace period on
any installation of Vista
up to 120 days, up from the 30 days out-of-the-box.
Brian Livingston of Windows Secrets
has taken that trial-extending procedure to the next level through with some
tinkering of the Registry. The “slmgr –rearm” command run on any version of
Vista will reset the grace period countdown back to 30 days, a maximum of three
times for a total of up to four months. Newly uncovered is a Registry key that could
give up to eight more 30-day trials on top of the three Rearms for as much as a
year of non-activated Windows Vista usage.
The specific Registry key is named “SkipRearm” and is found
in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SL. By default, the SkipRearm
Registry value is 0, but changing it to 1 will allow the Rearm command to be
run “an indefinite number of times,” thus extending the grace period.
While unscrupulous software users may use this to avoid
buying a genuine copy of Windows, the SkipRearm method by itself is legitimate.
Microsoft’s TechNet
site details the feature: “Rearming a computer restores the Windows
system to the original licensing state. All licensing and registry data related
to activation is either removed or reset. Any grace period timers are reset as
well.” Setting the Registry value of SkipRearm to 1 negates any intention of Rearming,
but, for some reason, it works to extend the number of times the command may be
issued.
The Rearm and SkipRearm features are part of Sysprep,
Microsoft’s tool used by administrators to prepare an installation of Windows
for imaging or delivery to a customer. An important note on Microsoft’s TechNet
documentation on Sysprep reads, “If you anticipate running Sysprep multiple
times on a single computer, you must use the SkipRearm setting in the
Microsoft-Windows-Security-Licensing-SLC component to postpone resetting the
activation clock. Because you can reset the activation clock only three times,
if you run Sysprep multiple times on a computer, you might run out of
activation clock resets. Microsoft recommends that you use the SkipRearm
setting if you plan on running Sysprep multiple times on a computer.”
Livingston presumes that these apparent loopholes in Windows
Vista activation exist to ease the burden on corporate IT administrators, who
may have to activate thousands of machines upgrading to the new operating
system.
On a test of copies of Vista Ultimate and Vista Home Premium
from January, the “slmgr –rearm” command worked three times and the SkipRearm
key worked eight times for upwards of a year of non-activated Windows. On a
copy of Vista Home Premium purchased in March, however, SkipRearm had no effect
on extending the use of “slmgr –rearm” at all, suggesting that Microsoft has quietly
released an updated version into stores. Livingston believes that business
editions of Vista—Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate—will still support the
Sysprep commands for their legitimate IT uses.