Extending Microsoft Windows Vista Activation

Microsoft have published how to extend the amount of time that Vista will ask to be activated. This is handy if you have recently installed Vista and wish to change hardware or for testing whether Vista will actually work with your current system.

The steps below will reset the grace period of activation by 30 days. This is know as a "rearm" and can be used upto 3 times.

1. Open a command prompt as an administrator (right click run as administrator)
2. In the Command Prompt, type: slmgr -rearm or sysprep /generalize
3. Reboot
4. Carry out this process when the Activation timer reaches 0 days.

The above will not work on Windows Vista Enterprise.