| Vista Install Secrets | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 25 Jul 2008, 07:35 PM (295 Views) | |
| hawa | 25 Jul 2008, 07:35 PM Post #1 |
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Many people are upset by the fact that the economical, "upgrade" version of Vista won't accept a Windows XP or Windows 2000 CD-ROM as proof of ownership. Vista Upgrade is said to install only to a hard disk that already has XP or 2000 already on it. But I've tested a method that allows you to clean-install the Vista upgrade version on any hard drive, with no prior XP or W2K installation — or even a CD — required. Save by avoiding the 'full' version Windows Vista, in my opinion, is a big improvement over Windows XP in many ways. But the new operating system is distinctly overpriced. The list price of the "full" (not "upgrade") version of the most expensive edition, Vista Ultimate, is $399.95 USD, with a street price around $380. That gold-plated retail figure is only possible because Microsoft long ago achieved monopoly pricing power in the PC operating system market. Most computer users would prefer to keep using an older version of Windows, such as XP, rather than paying the inflated prices for the "full" version of Vista. To encourage switching to a new OS, Microsoft has historically offered a lower, "upgrade" price to people who can prove that they've previously purchased an older copy of Windows. The difference between Vista's full and upgrade prices can be substantial. Based on the asking prices shown at Shopping.com on Jan. 31 — the day after the consumer version of Vista became available — the four most popular Vista versions will set you back approximately as follows: Edition Full version Upgrade version Vista Home Basic $192 $100 ($92 less) Vista Home Premium $228 $156 ($72 less) Vista Business $285 $192 ($93 less) Vista Ultimate $380 $225 ($155 less) The upgrade versions of Vista have street prices that are 32% to 48% cheaper than the full versions. If you're truly installing Vista over an old instance of XP or W2K, the upgrade version of Vista will find the older OS on your hard drive and install without question. The problem is that Vista, unlike every version of Windows in the past, doesn't let you insert a physical disc from an older operating system as evidence of your previous purchase. Vista has an undocumented feature, however, that actually allows you to "clean install" Vista to a hard disk that has no prior copy of XP or W2K. Use Vista's 'upgrade' version to clean-install The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation. This enables you to "clean install" an upgrade version of Vista to any formatted or unformatted hard drive, which is usually the preferred method when installing any new operating system. You must, in essence, install Vista twice to take advantage of this trick. But Vista installs much faster than XP, so it's quicker than installing XP followed by Vista to get the upgrade price. Before you install Vista on a machine that you don't know is 100% compatible, you should run Microsoft's free Upgrade Advisor. This program — which operates only on 32-bit versions of XP and Vista (plus Vista Enterprise) — reports to you on any hardware or software it finds that may be incompatible with Vista. See Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor page. Also, to see which flavors of XP Home, XP Pro, and 2000 officially support in-place installs and clean installs of the different Vista editions, see Microsoft's upgrade paths page. Here's a simplified overview of the steps that are required to clean-install the upgrade version of Vista: Step 1. Boot the PC from the Vista DVD. Step 2. Select "Install Now," but do not enter the Product Key from the Vista packaging. Leave the input box blank. Also, turn off the option Automatically activate Windows when I'm online. In the next dialog box that appears, confirm that you really do want to install Vista without entering a Product Key. Step 3. Correctly indicate the version of Vista that you're installing: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate. Step 4. Select the "Custom (Advanced)" install, not the "Upgrade" install. Step 5. Vista copies files at length and reboots itself one or more times. Wait for the install to complete. At this point, you might think that you could "activate" Vista, but you can't. That's because you haven't installed the Vista upgrade yet. To do that, run the DVD's setup.exe program again, but this time from the Vista desktop. The easiest way to start setup again is to eject and then reinsert the DVD. Step 6. Click "Install Now." Select Do not get the latest updates for installation. (You can check for these updates later.) Step 7. This time, do enter the Product Key from the Vista packaging. Once again, turn off the option Automatically activate Windows when I'm online. Step 8. On this second install, make sure to select "Upgrade," not "Custom (Advanced)." You're not doing a clean install now, you're upgrading to Vista. Step 9. Wait while Vista copies files and reboots itself. No user interaction is required. Do not boot from the DVD when asked if you'd like to do so. Instead, wait a few seconds and the setup process will continue on its way. Some DOS-like, character-mode menus will appear, but don't interact with them. After a few seconds, the correct choice will run for you automatically. Step 10. After you click a button labeled Start in the Thank You dialog box, Vista's login screen will eventually appear. Enter the username and password that you selected during the first install. You're done upgrading to Vista. Step 11. Within 30 days, you must "activate" your copy of Vista or it'll lose functionality. To activate Vista, click Show more details in the Welcome Center that automatically displays upon each boot-up, then click Activate Windows now. If you've dismissed the Welcome Center, access the correct dialog box by clicking Start, Control Panel, System & Maintenance, System. If you purchased a legitimate copy of Vista, it should quickly activate over the Internet. (You can instead activate by calling Microsoft on the phone, which avoids your PC exchanging information with Microsoft's server.) I'm not going into detail today on the merits of buying Vista at retail instead of buying a cheaper OEM copy. (The OEM offerings don't entitle you to call Microsoft for support, while the retail packages do.) Also, I'm not touching here on the least-expensive way to buy Vista, which is to take advantage of Microsoft's "educational" rate. I'll describe both of these topics in next week's newsletter. Why does Vista's secret setup exist? It's reasonable for us to ask ourselves whether buying an upgrade version of Vista, and then installing it to an empty hard disk that contains no previous version of Windows, is ethical. I believe it is. Microsoft itself created the upgrade process. The company designed Vista to support upgrading it over a previously installed copy of XP, W2K Pro, or Vista itself. This isn't a black-hat hacker exploit. It's something that's been deliberately programmed into the approved setup routine. Microsoft spent years developing and testing Vista. This upgrade trick must have been known to many, many people within the development team. Either Microsoft planned this upgrade path all along, knowing that computer magazines and newsletters (like this one) would widely publicize a way to "save money buying Vista." Or else some highly placed coders within the Vista development team decided that Vista's "full" price was too high and that no one should ever have to pay it. In either case, Vista's setup.exe is Microsoft's official install routine, and I see no problem with using it exactly as it was designed. We should also think about whether instances of Vista that were installed using the clean-install method will continue to operate. I believe that this method will continue to be present in Vista DVDs at least until Microsoft begins distributing the Service Pack 1 edition of Vista around fall 2007. Changing the routine in the millions of DVDs that are now in circulation would simply be too wrenching. And trying to remotely disable instances of Vista that were clean-installed — even if it were technically possible to distinguish them — would generate too many tech-support calls and too much ill will to make it worthwhile. Installing the upgrade version of Vista, but not installing over an existing instance of XP or W2K, probably violates the Vista EULA (end-user license agreement). If you're a business executive, I wouldn't recommend that you flout any Windows license provisions just to save money. If you're strictly a home user, contributing editor Susan Bradley points out that Microsoft's so-called Vista Family Discount (VFD) is an economical package that avoids any license issues. If you buy a retail copy of Vista Ultimate, MS lets you upgrade up to two additional PCs to Vista Home Premium for $50 each. For example, if you buy the upgrade version of Ultimate for $225, the grand total after you add two Home Premiums is $335. That's about $133 less than buying three upgrade versions of Home Premium. Details are at Microsoft's VFD page. Microsoft did revise a Knowledge Base article, number 930985, on Jan. 31 that obliquely refers to the upgrade situation. It simply states that an upgrade version of Vista can't perform a clean install when a PC is booted from the Vista DVD. A clean install will only work, the document says, when the Vista setup is run from within an older version of Windows (or if a full version of Vista is being used). This article doesn't at all deal with the fact that the Vista upgrade version will in fact clean-install using the steps described above. It'll be interesting to see whether MS ever explains why these steps were programmed in. Personally, I consider Vista's ability to upgrade over itself to be Digital Rights Management that actually benefits consumers. It's almost cosmic justice. I invite my readers to test Vista's undocumented clean-install method for themselves. There certainly must be aspects of this setup routine that I haven't yet discovered. I'll print the best findings from those sent in via our contact page. You'll receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of your choice if you're the first to send in a tip that I print. I'd like to thank my co-author of Windows Vista Secrets, Paul Thurrott, for his research help in bringing the clean-install method to light. I revealed in my Feb. 1 article that you can buy the "upgrade" version of Windows Vista and clean-install it to any hard drive, with or without a preexisting version of Windows XP or 2000. This renders the more expensive "full" version of Vista unnecessary — and many of my readers have provided additional information about why this upgrade trick works. Vista workaround is a deliberate feature My previous article explained that the Vista upgrade will succeed, and will validate, when any previous version of Windows is running at the time. That includes a 30-day trial version of Vista. Every retail copy of Vista allows a trial period by installing the product without entering a product key. (See my previous story for the exact steps.) The evidence is mounting that this upgrade policy is an official decision by Microsoft. It's clearly not any kind of hacker trick. The steps to install without a product key, and to upgrade regardless of what version of Windows is running, is hard-coded into Vista in such a way that it can't be a mistake. One source of mine shared with me some of the thinking within Microsoft on Vista upgrades. I'm withholding the source's name to protect his relationships within the Redmond company. He exchanged e-mails with a support engineer who said (I'm paraphrasing here): "Checking for previous versions of Windows was easy to spoof in XP. So Deployment just said, 'Let's skip it.' Vista only requires that the Upgrade Key must be entered while an instance of the operating system is running." The ability of Vista to run its upgrade routine over any version of Windows, including Vista itself, apparently simplified life for Microsoft's developers. It will also reduce the demands on Microsoft's telephone support department, which now has a method to quickly help people who would otherwise have difficulty installing the upgrade. I wrote last week that upgrading Vista over a copy of itself might violate Microsoft's EULA (End-User License Agreement). Now I'm not so sure. Is it a violation to install the product in a way that Microsoft itself programmed the product to operate? I'd like to acknowledge a couple of readers who wrote that it might be unethical to install the Vista upgrade without having purchased a previous version of the product. I agree. The clean-install method should only be used by people who did purchase a copy of XP or 2000, but can't install the Vista upgrade over their copy for some legitimate reason (as described in the next section, below). If Microsoft doesn't want the clean-install method to work at all, the company can easily change its policy. The Redmond firm could simply code Vista Home Premium's setup routine, for example, so it actually does check for XP, 2000, or a lower-priced edition of Vista, such as Vista Home Basic. When a Vista clean install may be necessary Reader George Walker describes several situations in which Microsoft technical support would need a back door to allow Vista to be installed without a running copy of Windows being present: "There are certain instances in which a person might not be able to install over an existing copy of XP or 2000. "For example, say you own a PC from one of the name brands that only shipped with a hidden recovery partition but no CDs. (Several well-publicized class-action lawsuits were filed against these companies over this practice.) You are eligible for the upgrade, and so you purchase and install it. Three months from now, your hard drive fails. You cannot re-install your previous verson of XP — first, because you have no recovery CDs and, second, your recovery partition was lost with the hard drive failure. "Microsoft's support would really need a way around this scenario to avoid telling the customer that if they cannot restore their PC to its original installation, they will have to buy another copy of Vista. All you need is one widely publicized instance of some poor, sweet old lady on a fixed income being swindled by the blood-thirsty Microsoft beast to have a public relations nightmare. ... "Other scenarios might include replacing the motherboard in a name brand computer and having your original recovery CDs refusing to install because they no longer recognize the PC as the one for which they were intended. Microsoft had to have a workaround for such instances." The ability of Windows Vista to perform a clean install and to upgrade over itself appears more and more to have been deliberately programmed in by Microsoft. It's not an oversight or a feature that wasn't intended to be present. This view is supported by a comment written by my "Windows Vista Secrets" co-author, Paul Thurrott, in the 8-step outline of the procedure that he published on Jan. 29. I tested the process and printed a complete, 11-step version of the procedure in my Feb. 1 article. Paul's sources say that the Vista clean-install method is documented in the internal knowledge base that's made available to Microsoft support people. Upgrade trick works with MS Office, too Reader Kent Hansen reports that Microsoft Office also upgrades itself over a nonactivated version of itself: "I was suprised to see last fall that if I took Microsoft up on the 60-day free MS Office trial link on my new Gateway notebook that turning the 60-day trial into a licensed version required only an 'upgrade' version of Office. Ron Harris indicates that this behavior goes all the way back to Microsoft Office 2000: "I believe it was Office 2000 that, when installing clean from an upgrade CD, would ask for a previous version CD. But if you told it to look (browse) the CD drive that had the upgrade you were installing, it would find itself and accept it as proof of a "previous version"! I suspect this trick works on a number of MS products, actually. Microsoft developers seem to have decided that it's too much trouble to determine which versions of software on a user's PC do and do not qualify for the upgrade price. As a result, more and more of Microsoft's software appears to consider any preexisting software as qualifying software. Vista's behavior of installing its upgrade version over any install of Vista looks more and more like a deliberate decision on Microsoft's part to make the install easy and less expensive than the full version of its software. The full version increasingly resembles the "golden casket" that undertakers routinely show to bereaved family members. No one expects the family to actually buy the gold-plated model, but it makes the other models seem less overpriced. European prices for Vista seem jacked-up Our readers in the United Kingdom are reporting that Microsoft is charging inflated prices for Windows Vista that are the same numbers in pounds as Americans are paying in dollars. That represents almost double the U.S. price. As Chris Bunton puts it: "How about highlighting Microsoft's outrageous differential pricing internationally? For instance, in the U.K., the Vista Home Premium upgrade is priced at GBP 149.99 — that's $294.58 at current rates, and a whopping 88.8% premium over the U.S. price. "Bill Gates on U.K. TV pretended there is little difference, except for short-term exchange-rate differences, which was really rather disingenuous. "When there is so much gouging of the market, who is surprised that honest consumers are keen to use any trick in the book to get it at a reasonable price, or else just decide to pass on the upgrade idea? The story is the same for Office 2007." I can't see any logical reason why Vista would cost so much more in the U.K. than it does in the U.S. Perhaps someone who fixes the prices at Microsoft thinks dollars and pounds are equal to each other! OEM versions and educational discounts to come I said last week that I'd write about other ways to get Vista for less than full price. These include buying OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) versions and by using educational discounts. I received so many great leads this week from my readers on the Vista upgrade process, however, that I couldn't get to everything that I wanted to reveal about discount marketing channels. I'll just say again that buying the OEM version of Windows doesn't qualify the buyer to receive telephone support from Microsoft. Buying a retail package in a store usually does. I promise to cover these topics and more in the next few weeks. Readers Walker, Hansen, Harris, and Bunton will receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for being the first to send me tips that I printed. It's widely assumed that a newly installed copy of Windows Vista must be "activated" before 30 days are up. But 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 — almost four full months! How to extend the Vista activation deadline The concept of "activation" has become familiar to computer users ever since Microsoft introduced it into the licensing for Windows XP. 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. Or, if you're paranoid about an automated session of this kind, you can call a phone number in various countries to receive a code to enter on your keyboard. An activated copy of Windows is "locked" to the specific configuration that was present at activation time — motherboard, hard drive, and so forth. Changing several components, such as during a hardware upgrade, can cause Windows to complain, saying it requires reactivation. Microsoft seems to be liberal about providing new activation codes to anyone who calls the telephone number and provides a plausible explanation. (My hard disk needed replacing, etc.) Don't be afraid to try calling if a copy of Windows ever needs reactivation. All versions of Vista allow a 30-day period without activation (except the corporate-oriented Vista Enterprise, which supports only a 3-day trial). If you know the secret, however, you can extend the activation deadline of editions such as Vista Home Premium and Vista Business up to four months past the original install date. Microsoft provides a command-line program in Vista known as the Software Licensing Manager (SLMGR) or slmgr.vbs.This is a Visual Basic script that resides in c:windowssystem32. You can read the contents of this script file with any text editor or a professional development environment. Among other things, slmgr.vbs has a function that pushes Vista's activation deadline out to 30 days from the date the command is run. 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 Vista, 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 Windows 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 -xpr If 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. Extend Vista's activation deadline. 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. The 120-day extension trick shouldn't be confused with the Vista clean-install trick that I described in my Feb. 1 article. That procedure, which Microsoft also hard-coded into Vista, enables anyone to install the "upgrade" version of Vista over any running copy of Windows, even a just-clean-installed copy of Vista itself. Microsoft's developers reportedly programmed the Vista upgrade process to test that it's running on any version of the OS — not just Windows XP, 2000, and other qualifying products — to make the coding process simpler. Why does Microsoft allow 120-day extensions? After my Vista clean-install article was published, a few readers asked whether I shouldn't keep quiet about procedures like these. After all, as I myself stated in my article, installing the upgrade version of Vista on a clean hard drive might violate Microsoft's EULA (End-User License Agreement). First, and most importantly, I'm a journalist. If something is true about Windows, and it's important for Windows users to know, I'm going to describe it for you as accurately as I can. Many sites on the Web are currently giving out half-baked explanations of Vista's clean-install feature. I want you to at least have the right info. I'd never publish a technique for a zero-day virus attack. But describing a known feature of Windows that Microsoft built into the product isn't comparable in any way to releasing viruses. Second, the fact is that Microsoft itself is writing these features into Vista. If the Redmond company doesn't want people to clean-install Vista or extend Vista's activation deadline, a couple of lines of code would quickly eliminate these features. Instead of leaving them out, Microsoft has deliberately programmed into Vista several back-door features that journalists are certain to find and publicize. These aren't hacks that require brain surgery on Windows. They're capabilities that have been specifically added into the operating system in ways that are easy for any Windows buyer to use. There are only three explanations I can think of for Microsoft to include these kinds of back doors in Vista: • The Windows development process is out of control and individual programmers are inserting any procedures they like that will make Vista a little more convenient for them; • Microsoft executives believe that allowing clean installs of Vista and 120-day activation extensions will reduce the cost of providing technical support — more than these back doors will reduce the company's revenue; or • MS executives realize that the list prices of the "full" versions of Vista are absurdly high, and that building in back doors that will be widely publicized makes the price of the upgrade versions of Vista seem more reasonable by comparison. One Microsoft executive, Eric Ligman, publicly criticized in a discussion forum my article on Vista's clean-install method. I contacted him and asked why Vista's upgrade routine will happily accept a clean-install version of itself, rather than making a simple test for a qualifying version of Windows. Is this an error on the part of the development team, or was it a Microsoft policy decision to quietly allow this kind of upgrade? "I don't believe it's a bug in the system," says Ligman, who is senior manager of Microsoft's U.S. Small Business Community Engagement program. "But it's not intended as a way to install an upgrade version of Vista without having a license for a previous version to do so." Ligman added, "I'm not the right person to comment on the thinking of the development team." That's certainly true, so I hope to reach someone within the ranks soon to clarify why a trivial version check wasn't included in Vista's upgrade routine. In the meantime, Ligman points out that companies using Microsoft's Volume Licensing program are entitled to the cheaper "upgrade" price for Vista even if the firms' existing desktops are running very old operating systems, such as Windows 98, NT Workstation 4.0, or IBM OS/2. For details, see page 82 of a Microsoft Word document entitled Product List (February 2007). Legitimate uses of the Software License Manager Whatever the reasons for the until-now-secret features of Vista, the impact on Microsoft's revenue stream if people began using these features en masse could be enormous. Consider the following scenario: 1. A college buys a single, retail copy of Vista; 2. Using the clean-install trick, an admin installs the single DVD onto an unlimited number of PCs, such as in classrooms throughout the school; 3. Using the 120-day extension trick, the admin makes it unnecessary to activate the copies until the end of the academic quarter; and 4. At the end of the quarter, the hard drives are wiped clean and the same DVD is used to clean-install Vista on an unlimited number of PCs for the new quarter that's beginning. This kind of mass duplication, of course, would clearly violate the Microsoft EULA. A school or company that installed this many copies of Vista from a single DVD would be wide open to an inspection by the Business Software Alliance, which obtains search warrants to conduct audits of machines companywide. Despite the risks, however, many people around the world can and will use the built-in features of Vista to install as many copies of the operating system as they like. Either Microsoft's Vista developers are totally incompetent, which I don't believe, or Microsoft officials at a high level are encouraging the introduction of these features, judging that the benefits outweigh the risks. In any case, the Software Licensing Manager has several legitimate uses. Many of these are documented when you run slmgr at a prompt without parameters. I'll just touch on a few here: • You can install a new product key by entering slmgr -ipk productkey; • You can display the installation ID by entering slmgr -dti so you can activate Vista offline (without an Internet connection); and • You can clear your product key from the Vista Registry by entering slmgr -cpky. This last command is potentially an important security feature. There's no need for your product key to reside in the Registry once Vista activation is complete. It might be best to remove it, so it cannot be copied and sent to a hacker by a Trojan horse that might one day sneak onto your PC. I hope to print more detailed information about this in a future newsletter. In addition to the above scenarios, there are many valid reasons for a Windows admin to extend the Vista activation date past its original 30-day limit. Companies that routinely build test PCs to try out various configurations, for instance, shouldn't have to buy a new copy of Vista every time a machine is wiped clean and rebuilt. A particular testing process might last more than 30 days, requiring an activation extension. Using the 120-day extension in various scenarios My testing shows that slmgr -rearm will extend Vista's activation deadline in all of the following situations: 1. A standard upgrade. If you installed Vista's upgrade version while running Windows XP or another qualifying product, this is the ordinary case. The extension works with no problems. 2. A clean-install of Vista. If you use my Feb. 1 clean-install trick to install Vista on a clean hard drive, the command also works with no problems. There's no need to first install the "upgrade" version of Vista on top of the clean-install of Vista before slmgr -rearm will extend the activation deadline. 3. An upgraded clean-install of Vista. If you've clean-installed Vista, and then upgraded Vista on top of itself, the slmgr -rearm command also works flawlessly to extend the deadline. When the Vista activation deadline passes Microsoft has baked the activation process into every version of Vista, and I believe that we'll all be living with this mechanism for years to come. Unlike Windows XP, Vista has tougher rollback conditions when its activation deadline passes and activation hasn't occurred. An article (paid reg required) in Windows IT Pro Magazine's December 2006 issue by Paul Thurrott, my co-author of Windows Vista Secrets, explains some of the behaviors you can expect after the deadline: "On a genuine, activated copy of Vista, users will have access to certain features, such as the Windows Aero user experience (which enables glass-like translucency effects and other visual niceties), Windows ReadyBoost (a performance-enhancement feature for systems with a USB-based flash memory device), some Windows Defender antispyware functionality, and optional downloadable updates from Windows Update. However, [if a system has passed the activation deadline] the user will lose access to those features and will receive persistent WGA [Windows Genuine Advantage] advertisements." As with Vista's clean-install behavior, I don't recommend that businesses try to save money by skirting Microsoft's licensing scheme. You should use these tricks only for legitimate purposes — such as when you do, in fact, have a paid-for license for the qualifying software. I wasn't the first to discover the 120-day extension technique. As far as I can tell, an early description came from Jeff Atwood of the Coding Horror blog. I merely tested the procedure under various scenarios and found it to be reliable. I'd also like to thank reader Ernie Kitt for his research help with this topic. I welcome your tips on the use of the techniques I describe above. Please send your tips, on this or any other subject, using the Windows Secrets contact page. Reader Kitt will receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of his choice for sending me research that I used. Microsoft always says it opposes "software pirates" who sell thousands of unauthorized copies of Windows. But the Redmond company has made things a lot easier for pirates by adding a line to the Registry that can be changed from 0 to 1 to postpone the need to "activate" Vista indefinitely. Activation doesn't stop true software piracy As most Windows users know, Microsoft has required "product activation" since the release of Windows XP in 2001. XP must be activated by communicating with servers in Redmond within 30 days of installation. By contrast, Microsoft Office XP, 2003, and 2007 require activatation before the package is used 5 to 50 times, depending on the version, according to a company FAQ. If a PC has no Internet connection, a user may activate a product by dialing a telephone number in various countries. The activation process will complete successfully only if the software has not been previously activated, such as on a different machine. If activation isn't completed within the trial period, Microsoft products temporarily shut down some of their features. MS Office loses the ability to edit and save files. After Vista's activation deadline runs out, the user can do little other than use Internet Explorer to activate the operating system or buy a new license. Microsoft describes its product activation scheme as a way to foil software pirates. However, as I previously described in an InfoWorld Magazine article on Oct. 22, 2001, activation does nothing to stop mass piracy. The Redmond company actually included in Windows XP a small file, Wpa.dbl, that makes it easy for pirates to create thousands of machines that validate perfectly. Far from stopping software piracy, product activation has primarily been designed to prevent home users from installing one copy of Windows on a home machine and a personal-use copy on a laptop. As I explained in an article on Mar. 8, buying a copyrighted work and making another copy strictly for personal use is specifically permitted to consumers by the U.S. Copyright Act and the copyright laws of many other countries. For example, courts have repeatedly ruled that consumers can make copies of copyrighted songs or television programs for personal use (not for distribution or resale). This principle is legally known as "fair use." The home edition of Microsoft Office 2007 reflects this principle, allowing consumers to activate three copies of a single purchased product. Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, however, allow only one activation. Surprisingly, Microsoft has embedded into its new Vista operating system a feature that makes things easier than ever for true, mass software pirates. These tricksters will be able to produce thousands of Windows PCs machines that won't demand activation indefinitely — at least for a year or more. Leaving the activation barn door open I reported in a Feb. 1 article that the upgrade version of Windows Vista allows itself to be clean-installed to a new hard drive. The new Microsoft operating system completely omits any checking for a qualifying previous version of Windows. This allows the upgrade version of Vista to successfully upgrade over a nonactivated, trial version of itself. After my article appeared, ZDnet blogger Ed Bott summarized the secret in a post on Feb. 15. He flatly states, "You satisfied every condition of the license agreement and aren't skating by on a technicality. The fact that you have to use a kludgey workaround to use the license you've purchased and are legally entitled to is Microsoft's fault." In my own piece, I had speculated that clean-installing the upgrade version of Vista "probably violates the Vista EULA (End User License Agreement)." But more and more computer experts are saying that the procedure is fully compliant with the EULA and, in any event, is perfectly legal. I wrote a follow-up story on Feb. 15. I reported that Microsoft includes in Vista a one-line command that even novices can use to postpone the product's activation deadline three times. This can extend the deadline from its original 30 days to as much as 120 days — almost four months. PCWorld.com posted a report on my story on Feb. 17. The magazine quotes a Microsoft spokeswoman as saying that extending Vista's activation deadline as I described it "is not a violation of the Vista End User License Agreement." I'm glad that's clear. The feature that I've revealing today shows that Microsoft has built into Vista a function that allows anyone to extend the operating system's activation deadline not just three times, but many times. The same one-line command that postpones Vista's activation deadline to 120 days can be used an indefinite number of times by first changing a Registry key from 0 to 1. This isn't a hacker exploit. It doesn't require any tools or utilities whatsoever. Microsoft even documented the Registry key, although obtusely, on its Technet site. But dishonest PC sellers could use the procedure to install thousands of copies of Vista and sell them to unsuspecting consumers or businesses as legitimately activated copies. This would certainly violate the Vista EULA, but consumers might not realize this until the PCs they bought started demanding activation — and failing — months or years later. 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, enter 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 -rearm or rundll32 slc.dll,SLReArmWindows Either 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. I explained the slmgr command and its parameters in my Feb. 15 article.) Step 7. To extend the activation deadline of Vista indefinitely, repeat steps 1 through 6 as necessary. Any crooked PC seller with even the slightest technical skill could easily install a command file that would carry out steps 1 through 6 automatically. The program could run slmgr -rearm three times, 30 days apart, to postpone Vista's activation deadline to 120 days. It could then run skip -rearm every 30 days, for a period of months if not years, by first resetting the SkipRearm key. The program could be scheduled to check Vista's activation deadline during every reboot, and to remind the user to reboot once a month if a deadline was nearing. The buyer of such a PC would never even see an activation reminder, much less be required to go through the activation process. If you happen to buy a Vista PC from a little-known seller, and the price was too good to be true, use Vista's search function to look for the string SkipRearm in files. You may discover that your "bargain" computer will mysteriously start demanding activation in a year or two — but your product key won't be valid. I asked Microsoft why SkipRearm is included in Vista if it can be used to create machines that appear not to need activation for long periods. A Microsoft spokewoman replied, "I connected with my colleagues and learned, unfortunately, we do not have information to share at this time." (I can't identify the speaker because the policy of Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's public-relations firm, prohibits the naming of p.r. spokespersons.) In my testing of Microsoft's back-door loophole, I've found that the technique can be used to postpone the activation deadline one year or longer. It may or may not, however, work forever, as I describe below. Why does SkipRearm even exist in Vista? The Vista development teaam apparently inserted the SkipRearm loophole to help major corporations work around Microsoft's new Volume Licensing Agreement. This new program, which the Redmond company calls "Volume Licensing 2.0," requires buyers to set up a Key Management Service (KMS) host, as described by a Microsoft FAQ. Companies must choose from two types of digital keys and three different methods of activation to validate thousands of individual Vista machines within the corporate LAN. Activation of Windows XP, by comparison, requires merely that volume purchasers use a single product key. Corporate buyers obtain a unique key when signing a Volume Licensing Agreement. Microsoft has said, however, that most Windows XP piracy involves stolen product keys that are used by others to activate unauthorized machines. The new KMS requirement is intended to discourage such piracy, but it places a heavy burden on corporate IT administrators. For example, 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. Contributing editor Susan Bradley points out, "The good guys have to go through this stupid implementation of a KMS deployment because of bad guys abusing the system." She strongly feels that users should comply with Microsoft's EULA provisions. "The operating system license has always been a one-machine install. ... Many of us forget the multiple-install rule [for Microsoft Office] since we are so used to the one license, one install rule," she adds. In its TechNet documents, Microsoft recommends the repeated use of SkipRearm. How many times is "multiple times"? My testing revealed that the answer is, well, indefinite. • On a copy of Vista Ultimate that Microsoft released in New York City on Jan. 29, I found that changing SkipRearm from 0 to 1 allowed the command slmgr -rearm to postpone Vista's activation deadline eight separate times. After that, changing the 0 to 1 had no effect, preventing slmgr -rearm from moving the deadline. The use of slmgr -rearm 3 times, plus using SkipRearm 8 times would eliminate Vista's activation nag screens for about one year (12 periods of 30 days). • On a copy of the upgrade version of Vista Home Premium that I bought in a retail store on Jan. 30, slmgr -rearm also worked 3 times and SkipRearm worked 8 times before losing their effect. This combination would, as with Vista Ultimate, permit a one-year use of Vista without nag screens appearing. • On a copy of the full version of Vista Home Premium that I bought in a retail store on Mar. 14, SkipRearm had no effect on extending the use of slmgr -rearm at all. This suggests that Microsoft has slipstreamed a new version into stores, eliminating the SkipRearm feature in Vista Home. That could mean that changing the key from 0 to 1 will now work only in the business editions of Vista — Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate — so corporations can use the loophole. Where is the usage count of slmgr -rearm stored? Where is the usage count of SkipRearm stored? These bytes won't be hard for expert users to find. The use restrictions may be easily lifted. If so, this would allow crooked PC sellers to truly create machines that would never need activation, ever. The financial impact of SkipRearm on Microsoft I'd like to repeat here that I'm not advocating that anyone use the above technique to violate Microsoft's EULA or avoid paying for Vista. Any company that used SkipRearm to install Vista on multiple machines for as long as possible would have little defense against a surprise inspection by the Business Software Alliance. This coalition of software makers, which includes Microsoft, investigates reports of unlicensed software and obtains warrants to conduct audits. As a journalist, my job is to report the facts. SkipRearm was specifically built into Vista to be used. Microsoft executives made Vista's activation overly complex and cumbersome. So the development team apparently invented a Registry key to lift the burden of Vista's activation deadline, for at least a year and probably more. The technique is so powerful and basic, however, that hackers around the world may soon use the feature to install millions of extra copies of Vista without buying them. This could have a major impact on Microsoft's revenues. The company's employees and shareholders might want to be aware of this. Product activation does little or nothing to stop mass software piracy. It's become so convoluted, the way Microsoft has implemented it, that it's more of an irritation to legitimate users than a worthwhile antipiracy measure. In my opinion, Microsoft should concentrate on legal action against true pirates instead of inventing more ways to drive honorable users bonkers. |
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12:34 AM Jul 11