You might want to compare the differences between Vista editions Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate.
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. However, Microsoft has built into Vista a simple, one-line command that anyone can use to extend the activation deadline of the product to a total of 120 days.
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 , 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 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 -xprIf 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. . 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.
