Windows 7 can be used for 120 days for free
SOFTWARE ALCHEMIST Microsoft has decided that its Windows 7 product can be used for up to 120 days without providing a product activation key.
The Vole generally allows punters only 30 days to activate their copies of the company's operating systems, though a little-known command designed for corporate administrators can be used by anyone to reset the countdown up to three times.
Windows Secrets has published step-by-step instructions for using a single command to add an additional 90 days to the stock 30-day grace period.
During the 30-day grace period, Windows 7 operates as if it has been activated. As the grace period shrinks, however, increasingly-frequent messages appear on the screen. For example, on days four through 27, a pop-up asks the user to activate once each day. During days 28 and 29, the pop-up displays every four hours, while on day 30, it appears hourly.
However, by using the command "slmgr -rearm" at a Windows 7 command prompt, users can reset the time-until-activation countdown back to 30 days.
The secret was found by Woody Leonard, a contributing editor at Windows Secrets and the author of several computer books, including Windows Vista All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies.
The Vole has since confirmed that the command can be used as many as three times by Windows 7 users to avoid activation.
The command apparently works on Vista too, but we have never met anyone who wanted to run that for longer than a month. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
I agree on the Vista re-arm thing...It took me a whole 20 minutes to uninstall Vista Home "Premium" and upgrade to XP Pro!
..you build your PC and then go to install the updates and....bingo, you have to activate to get the updates.
Not something you really want to do 40 minutes into a 3 hour rebuild session especially if it goes tits up an hour later and you have to install/activate again.
Would be nice to get an initial full updates install without having to activate. Happy to do it when I'm satisfied the build is good but not before.
Linux can be used for 120 years for free!
Agree with comment on not updating before activation, need to be sure O/S runs smoothly first. not a good idea surfing the web with no updates applied. also still no news on providing a multi user licence for home use ie. 3 licences. Other companies do it why cant microsoft...!!!
30 Days is actually 30 minutes if you install new bought disc into new system you built. if its genuine, let auto act do its trick, immediately. Personlly wouldn't want O/S with death sentence Timer in IT.
Windows cann't tell diffeence between genuine windows & whatever there Hunting down, main point is how much might you pay, Missie.
If Yous Lived in India, country which Mikes' Blog reveals as Having NO Cattle at ALL AnyWhere, Meat Virtually Illegal, How Thristy for "Their" blood Would You Become, Lifetime of Stravation Iduced Frenzied Destruction of Others Prizes, for slight momentary emotional boost.
drashek
So it is value for your money the first 120 days, huh?
Once again everyone showing there ignorance, im trully amazed that you lot may call yourselves IT professionals because if you ay of you where my staff id have sacked you all for your stupidity.
For the record, you install Windows 7 and dont activate it, you then install as many updates as you like, 30 days later you re arm windows, if there are more updates that you havent installed yet then do so, 30 days later you re arm again, and finally again, that means you can use it for 120 days without any money being paid or or loss of functinality. Now if you are skint and cant be botherd to pay for it, simply back up anything you need or as most pros will already be doing, leave your personaly data on your other partition/drive and reinstall it.
Once again, you have 120 days for unlimited use, and so the process continues, that is more than ample time to check it out in any environment.
Grow up people, you are stuck in the dark ages, without a doubt after much use myself and all my colleagues conside this the best MS based workstation system they have made and for workstations and office use THE best os availalble for reliability and ease of use/administer.
holy cow, look at the guy's portrait on that article. its david brent!
I just learnt about the Microsoft Partner Network on Oct 7 at Wembley Stadium where they will be telling us about their strategies plus some of the technologies they are launching. Registration is at: https://partner.microsoft.com/UK/40114905. Is anyone planning on attending this?
Who was it who said you could install Dimdows without resorting to arcane command-line sequences?
I just trialled the final release of Win7. First problem was finding drivers for my AMD SB650 RAID controller, eventually discovered after some effort. Get it all installed, install the still BETA AMD Catalyst drivers for my on-board Radeon 3300HD, only to find the catalyst control panel has been nurfed and I can no longer adjust my screen scaling so I'm left with a border around my TV.
The new task bar is terrible to use and the GUI feels really bloated even in comparison to Vista (which for the record after moving to x64 and sp1 have never had any major issues and it runs quite fast). I don't like the full screen preview, I don't like how the start menu is fully dynamic and that the options on the right are even less clear. They've done nothing to the shitty control panel. All they've done is added "Click to disable this" options everywhere.
It's basically Vista SP2 with a shit GUI. I'm due a free copy to be delivered for my laptop, I'm not going to install it even though I wanted to use the new remote desktop. The only thing that's going to make me use it is when DX11 graphics cards are released.
If I wanted such a poorly thought out and bloated GUI along poor quality drivers I'd just install the new MAC OSX as it's unix based.
In summary, 120 days is more than enough to decide to revert back to your old OS. I prefer vista and that's saying something.
...install Hazar's loader and use it indefinitely as fully activated with no nags.