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Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 96 • 2007-02-15 • Circulation: over 265,000
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For links to every subtopic in this issue, scroll down to the
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TOP STORY Use Vista without activation for 120 days
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:\windows\system32. 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:
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. Brian Livingston is editorial director of the Windows Secrets Newsletter and the co-author of Windows Vista Secrets and 10 other books. |
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LANGALIST TIPS New hardware doesn't have to cause problems
Using Windows with PCI Express hardware Reader Bob Spaith encountered a problem that will become more and more common as new hardware technology moves into our Windows PCs:
First, for clarity: PCI and PCI Express are electrical "buses." A bus is a series of connections that your PC's components and subsystems use to communicate with each other. Most PCs today are built around the original PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) parallel architecture introduced back in the early 1990s. PCI was a replacement for the even older first-generation ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) and EISA (Extended ISA) architectures. These last two bus types have all but vanished from current PC motherboard designs. Toward the end of the 90s, PCI technology spawned two offshoots. In 1997, Intel introduced AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), which is a variant of PCI architecture designed specifically for higher-speed graphics cards. In 1999, a consortium of hardware vendors launched PCI-X. This is not PCI Express, but rather "PCI eXtended," which is another variant on classic PCI's parallel-connection technology designed to increase throughput speed. A 32-bit PCI-X card can fit into a standard 32-bit PCI slot without problems (although it may have extra connectors "hanging over" the edge of the slot). The PCI-X card will run just fine in a PCI socket, albeit at the slower speed of standard PCI. Although AGP is also a close variant of classic PCI technology, AGP uses a special slot or socket that won't accept standard PCI cards. Most PCs sold today have several standard PCI and one AGP slot. In fact, the PCI/AGP combination is all but ubiquitous. PCI-X is still around, but much less common. PCI Express is an entirely different animal. Originally called "Third Generation I/O" (3GIO) and introduced in 2002, PCI Express is a high-speed serial bus that can run at up to 10 GHz, as opposed to the approximate 1 GHz practical limit for conventional PCI's parallel architecture. PCI Express cards usually have special slots or sockets. Normally, you can't plug a PCI Express card into any standard PCI slot — even if it fits, PCI and PCI Express use fundamentally different architectures (parallel versus serial), and so they're unlikely to work unless the card has some ability to switch types, which depends on what kind of socket it's plugged into. This brings us back to Bob's example. Adaptec sells both PCI-X and PCI Express cards. I could find no mention in the Adaptec sales literature about their PCI Express cards being interchangeable between bus types. So, my guess is that Bob actually has a PCI-X card, rather than a PCI Express. (The similarity in the names is, indeed, confusing.) His PCI-X card is working, and all he's losing is the extra speed afforded by the PCI-X technology. His card is operating as if it were a standard PCI card. You'll be glad to note that Windows is happy to work with any or all of these technologies. It may be no surprise that Windows works with PCI, AGP and PCI-X because they've been around for quite a while. But Windows also works just fine with PCI Express. This is because the consortium that designed PCI Express decided that it would still use the classic PCI driver model on the software side. (In fact, Microsoft was part of that PCI Express consortium.) So, no new classes of drivers or other software would be needed, and any operating system that works with ordinary PCI should also be able to work with PCI Express. PCI, AGP, and PCI-X are aging but viable technologies that are currently in use. They're well-proven, thoroughly known, and mostly bulletproof. But PCI Express is the likely successor to them all, because it offers better performance and a more open-ended future. As PCI Express becomes more common, it's good to know that you won't have to worry about changing or reconfiguring your copy of Windows to take advantage of the new hardware. Windows already knows how to use it! Online resources to find Windows tips With the plethora of tip sites on the Web, which ones are really worth your time? Reader Warren Taylor has one suggestion, and I have several others:
You might also want to note the free Windows Secrets WinFind search service that lets you search not only the back issues of this newsletter, but also 14 other sources for expert advice on Windows. Very handy!  Figure 1. The free WinFind service lets you search 15 trusted sites that provide reliable Windows tips. Other sites I personally find helpful include Doug Knox's Windows Tweaks and Tips and Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows. You may recognize Paul Thurrott as Brian Livingston's co-author of the best-selling Windows Vista Secrets book. Online sources are great, but sometimes the depth, permanence and portability of a book are extremely valuable as well! Is the '1024-cylinder boundary' real? Reader Charlie Rose couldn't defrag his C: partition in Windows due to too little space. When he tried to enlarge the partition, his software told him the newly enlarged partition would be unbootable. What are his options?
To my knowledge, no PC sold since about the year 2000 has had this 1024-cylinder boundary limitation. Many of the major-brand PCs overcame this constraint years earlier. Some partitioning tools, however, still retain the warning about the 1024-cylinder boundary, just in case. If your PC is less than about seven years old, odds are you're fine. You can ignore the warning and make the partition whatever size you wish. Of course, it's always wise to make a backup first before performing any work on live partitions. If your PC is an old one, or if you're still not sure about it, go to the manufacturer's Web site and follow the instructions there for downloading and installing the latest BIOS update. It's usually just a small software tool that reprograms the BIOS with new instructions. No hardware changes are needed. In the unlikely event that none of the above works for you, you probably can buy a modern replacement BIOS. The better BIOS replacement sites can tell you if they have a BIOS for your model PC, and can offer how-to instructions. Some representative vendors include eSupport's BIOS Upgrades, BIOSman, and BadFlash. A new BIOS isn't expensive, usually costing in the vicinity of $30 or so. But again, if your PC is of any reasonably recent vintage, the "1024-cylinder boundary" warning you got is probably just a false alarm. Is the antimalware tool PrevX1 worthwhile? While trying to track down a "questionable program" he found on his PC, reader Ronald L. Berman ran across an unfamiliar antimalware tool:
You see, some anti-malware tools find "threats" that aren't really all that threatening as a way to prove to you that you need that tool. There's not enough detail in your note to know if that's the case with PrevX1, but it's a possibility. PrevX1's main distinction seems to be that it's primarily heuristic, which means that it can "learn" to detect new malware by observing its behavior, even if a particular strain of malware is new to PrevX1. But PrevX1 isn't purely heuristic; it also relies on a central, online database of known malware "signatures" or software descriptions. This two-part approach isn't unique. For example, many antivirus tools combine an element of heuristic technology with a central database of virus signatures. It's the latter that are downloaded when your antivirus tool updates itself. PrevX1 doesn't do that kind of updating, however. When it runs, it uses its heuristics plus the malware signatures stored in the online central database. But it apparently does not retain a full copy of the signatures for use when your PC is offline. This is one of the reasons that most formal reviews give PrevX1 a mixed scorecard. For example, PC Magazine's review of PrevX1 said, "Requires active Internet connection for full protection. Doesn't remove malware traces such as Registry keys and non-active files. Occasionally blocks valid programs." And PC World said, "Slow scanning time; not a complete Internet security solution." So, PrevX1 seems to work, but not well enough to make me want to change the tools I'm currently using. On the other hand, if PrevX1 works for you, and is useful in solving a particular problem you're having, then by all means go for it. It's a perfectly legitimate tool. By the way, you can always see the current recommended "best of breed" security tools on the free Windows Secrets Security Baseline page. Fred Langa is editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He was editor of Byte Magazine (1987 to 1991) and editorial director of CMP Media (1991 to 1996), overseeing Windows Magazine and others. He edited the LangaList e-mail newsletter from 1997 to 2006, when it merged with Windows Secrets. |
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USEFUL LINKS Put a projector in your pocket Most of us don't carry a laptop projector with us when we travel — but that might change with the emergence of new technology that allows projectors to weigh under 1 pound and literally fit into a pocket. (By Brian Livingston, Datamation) More info |
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WACKY WEB WEEK Vista voice-recognition software is laughable
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YOUR SUBSCRIPTION The Windows Secrets Newsletter is published weekly on the 1st through 4th Thursdays of each month, plus occasional news updates. Vacation breaks occur in late August, Thanksgiving Week, and Christmas/New Year's. Publisher: WindowsSecrets.com LLC, 300 Queen Anne Ave. N. #456, Seattle, WA 98109 USA. Vendors, please send no unsolicited packages to this address (readers' letters are fine). Editorial Director: Brian Livingston. Editor: Fred Langa. Contributing Editors: Susan Bradley, Scott Dunn, Mark Edwards, Woody Leonhard, Chris Mosby, Ryan Russell. Research Director: Vickie Stevens. Program Director: Brent Scheffler. Managing Editor: Jody Braverman. Trademarks: Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. The Windows Secrets series of books is published by Wiley Publishing Inc. The Windows Secrets Newsletter, WindowsSecrets.com, LangaList, LangaList Plus, WinFind, Security Baseline, Patch Watch, Perimeter Scan, Wacky Web Week, the Logo Design (W, S or road, and Star), and the slogan Everything Microsoft Forgot to Mention all are trademarks and service marks of WindowsSecrets.com LLC. All other marks are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: Anyone may subscribe to this newsletter by visiting our free signup page. WE GUARANTEE YOUR PRIVACY: 1. We will never sell, rent, or give away your address to any outside party, ever. 2. We will never send you any unrequested e-mail, besides newsletter updates. 3. All unsubscribe requests are honored immediately, period. Privacy policy HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: To unsubscribe from the Windows Secrets Newsletter,
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