How to bypass Vista activation

The following describes the Registry key that’s involved

STEP 1

While running a copy of Windows Vista that hasn’t yet been activated, click the Start button, type regedit into the Search box, then press Enter to launch the Registry Editor.

STEP 2

Explore down to the following Registry key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SL

STEP 3

Right-click the Registry key named SkipRearm and click Edit. The default is a Dword (a double word or 4 bytes) with a hex value of 00000000. Change this value to any positive integer, such as 00000001, save the change, and close the Registry Editor.

STEP 4

Start a command prompt with administrative rights. The fastest way to do this is to click the Start button, type cmd in the Search box, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. If you’re asked for a network username and password, provide the ones that log you into your domain. You may be asked to approve a User Account Control prompt and to provide an administrator password.

STEP 5

Type one of the following two commands and press Enter:slmgr -rearmorrundll32 slc.dll, SLReArmWindowsEither command uses Vista’s built-in Software Licensing Manager (SLMGR) to push the activation deadline out to 30 days after the command is run. Changing SkipRearm from 0 to 1 allows SLMGR to do this an indefinite number of times. Running either command initializes the value of SkipRearm back to 0.

STEP 6

Reboot the PC to make the postponement take effect. (After you log in, if you like, you can open a command prompt and run the command slmgr -xpr to see Vista’s new expiration date and time.

STEP 7

To extend the activation deadline of Vista indefinitely, repeat steps 1 through 6.