Mundy

Written by Daniel Mundy

slmgr -dli (determine license information, is this PC activated, etc)

slmgr -ipk <MAK> (enter the MAK key)

slmgr -ato (activate over the Internet using the MAK key entered above)

 

You can reset the grace period up to three times with the command slmgr -rearm. This “rearming” allows you to run Vista without license key up to four months. Brian Livingston has found out a method to prolong this period indefinitely long using the SkipRearm registry setting.

One only has to change the SkipReam registry subkey to 1. You can find this key here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurentVersion\SL

Then you run slmgr –rearm on a command prompt with administrator privileges before the grace period is over. This will give you another grace period of one month. According to Livingston this can be done an indefinite number of times if SKipRearm is set to 1. In his tests he was able to rearm Vista 12 times. He writes, however, that it didn’t work with a full version of the Home Premium edition.

Source: http://4sysops.com/archives/skiprearm-use-vista-indefinitely-long-without-activation/

Sysprep and Activation

Microsoft provides a tool called System Preparation (sysprep.exe) to prepare Vista machines for use. If a system can't be completely prepped within 30 days after installation, an admin can run the command sysprep /generalize to postpone the activation deadline another 30 days. However, like the slmgr -rearm command, sysprep /generalize will only succeed three times.

To work around this, as a Technet document states, "Microsoft recommends that you use the SkipRearm setting if you plan on running Sysprep multiple times on a computer." This is echoed by Microsoft Knowledge Base article 929828.

Source: http://windowssecrets.com/comp/070315/#story1