By default, Windows Vista gives you 30 days to activate. Once the deadline of 30 days has passed, you will not be able to use Windows without activating it first. After the trial of 30 days Windows Vista enters RFM (reduced functionality mode) and eventually starts to disable various components. But using this trick you can extend the deadline for activation infinitely.
Note : You need administrator level access to perform these operations.
- Open Windows’ Registry Editor by clicking on Start Menu, typing regedit in the search box , right-clicking on regedit.exe when it appears and selecting Run as administrator.
- Navigate to the following key in the Registry Editor :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionSL
- Change the value SkipRearm from the default 0 to 1. This is done by double-clicking on SkipRearm and entering 1 and clicking OK.
- Open an elevated command prompt window : Click on Start Menu, type cmd in the search box, right-click on cmd.exe when it appears and select Run as administrator.
- In the command prompt, type slmgr -rearm and press Enter. This script will take a while to run. Running this command will reset the SkipRearm value back to 0 (see step 3 above).
- Restart your computer to find that you have 30 days left to activate!
Repeat the process as necessary to keep extending your activation deadline infinitely. The steps 1 to 3 are very important, if you omit them, and directly run the command slmgr -rearm, then you would be able to extend only 3 times, i.e., only for 90 days. Setting the SkipRearm value in the registry to 1 before giving command slmgr -rearm, makes you able to extend the activation deadline as many times as you want.