Use any version of Windows 7 free for 120 days

Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 211 • 2009-08-20 • Circulation: over 400,000

Table of contents

Top Story: Use any version of Windows 7 free for 120 days
Known Issues: Add Adobe to the list of update opportunists
Wacky Web Week: Annoying tweeters meet their zombie demise
Bonus: Everything Windows 7 available at your fingertips
LangaList Plus: Delete files that Windows labels ‘undeletable’
Best Software: New browser combines best of three worlds
Insider Tricks: Bolster your security with top-notch free tools

Top Story

Use any version of Windows 7 free for 120 days

By Woody Leonhard

There’s an easy way to stretch Windows 7′s 30-day free-trial period to 120 days so you can determine whether Microsoft’s new operating system meets your needs.

Even better — if you know the secret — you can try out any version of Win7, from Ultimate to the lowly Basic, using a single install disc.

It’s fair to say that by now hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of copies of Windows 7 sit on DVDs and hard drives all over the world. You might have downloaded a copy of Win7 from the official sites: Microsoft Developer Network, TechNet, or Software Advantage. Perhaps you hooked up your machine to a torrent or a newsgroup site to download the new OS. Or maybe you snagged a copy from your tech-savvy sister-in-law.

Whichever channel you use, if you don’t already have a copy of Windows 7, you can easily put your paws on the installation bits and burn your own install DVD. Just be sure what you downloaded is the real, shipping version of Windows 7. One way to confirm this is to use a set of checksum verification instructions found on Softpedia.

Getting a copy of Windows 7 is the easy part. The rub — and the place where Microsoft makes its money — is the Win7 activation key. You’re expected to pay for the key, no matter how you obtained the software.

Microsoft allows anyone to install and use any version of Windows 7 for 30 days without having to enter an activation key. There are no strings attached, and the operating system’s performance is not degraded or defaced during the trial.

Fortunately for us, the 30-day grace period can be extended up to three additional times — to a total of 120 days — using a Microsoft-supplied utility called the Software License Manager (slmgr). This tool conveniently ships with Windows 7.

How to use slmgr to extend the free-trial period of Windows Vista was first reported by WS editorial director Brian Livingston on Feb. 15, 2007. Because Windows 7 includes slightly different versions than Vista, the procedure has some new wrinkles. Listen up.

How to extend Win7′s trial to a full four months

In a nutshell: If you install Windows 7 and don’t enter an installation key, the 30-day activation clock starts. To see how many days you have left, click Start, right-click Computer, and choose Properties. At the bottom of the dialog under Windows Activation, you’ll see the number of days left in your trial period.

When that number gets perilously close to zero, you can extend the free period another 30 days via the following steps:

Step 1: Click Start, All Programs, Accessories. Right-click Command Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. Enter your administrator password.
Step 2: Type the following command and press Enter:

slmgr -rearm

Note the space after slmgr and the hyphen in front of rearm.
Step 3: Restart Windows 7.

Once the OS restarts, the Properties dialog described above will indicate that Windows 7′s activation grace period has been reset to a full 30 days.

You can run the -rearm trick a total of three times. If you perform a -rearm at the end of each 30-day period, you end up with 120 days of full, unfettered Windows 7 use without having to supply an activation key in the interim.

How to install Win7 Ultimate now, pay less later

When the activation grace period runs out — whether it’s in 30 or 120 days or somewhere in between — you need to feed Windows 7 an activation key. That’s when many Windows 7 customers will find themselves in trouble.

Let me clarify up front that the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of Windows take the same keys. A key that works for 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium also works for 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. However, different keys are required for Ultimate vs. Pro vs. Home Premium.

(I assume you won’t want to install the exceedingly limited Windows Home Basic, which is intended primarily for developing countries. And you won’t be installing Windows Home Starter, because you can’t buy a key for it. The Starter version is available only when preinstalled on a new netbook.)

Say, for example, you install a free trial of Windows 7 Ultimate. However, when the time comes to pay the piper, you want to shell out your shekels only for Win7 Home Premium. (That’s the version most individual users will choose, and it’s considerably cheaper than Win7 Ultimate — which isn’t worth spending more for, as I see it.)

If you installed a trial of Win7 Ultimate without knowing the secret, you’re stuck. The Home Premium key won’t activate an Ultimate PC. Your only option is a complete reinstall of Windows using the version that matches your bought-and-paid-for key — Home Premium, in this case.

The best solution is to install in the first place the version you probably want to end up with. If you expect to pay for Windows 7 Home Premium, you should install Windows 7 Home Premium. The same goes for Windows 7 Professional, which is for use in corporate domains.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to install either Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro from a Windows 7 Ultimate CD: simply delete a single file. Hard to believe, but true.

Convert Win7 Ultimate to Pro or Home Premium

Here’s the crux of the matter: If you put a DVD containing Win7 Ultimate in your PC and run the installer — either by booting from the disc or running the setup program from inside Windows — you end up with Win7 Ultimate. No surprises there.

However, if you first delete a tiny file named ei.cfg before making the installation DVD, the Win7 installer will give you the choices shown in Figure 1.

Windows 7 installer

Figure 1. Delete or rename ei.cfg before burning a Windows 7 installation DVD, and a menu then allows you to select which version to install.

In fact, no matter which Win7 installation DVD you have — Ultimate, Pro, or Premium — if you delete the ei.cfg file from the disc, you’ll be offered the same choices and can install any version of Windows 7.

At the moment, only a small number of people have received a physical DVD containing Windows 7 Ultimate. Instead, most current Win7 users downloaded an .iso file, which includes everything on the Windows 7 Ultimate DVD: boot settings, file-structure details, etc. You burn the .iso file to a DVD. Then you either boot your PC from the DVD or run the setup program within an older version of Windows to kick the Win7 installer into gear.

If you have a Windows 7 Ultimate .iso file, it’s easy to delete ei.cfg. First, get a 30-day trial version of the gBurner utility, which is available from the program’s download page at CNET’s Download.com. Then install and run gBurner, open the Windows 7 .iso file, and delete (or rename) sourcesei.cfg. Piece o’ cake, although it can take 20 minutes to save the altered .iso file.

You can then use either gBurner or Alex Feinman’s ISO Recorder program (available from Alex’s site) to burn a version of the .iso file without ei.cfg to DVD.

What if you do have a physical Windows 7 installation DVD, but you don’t have an .iso file? In that case, use either gBurner or ISO Recorder to rip the DVD into an .iso file. Then follow the instructions above to delete the ei.cfg file and burn a new DVD.

Get the right version of Windows 7 going now and you won’t have to reinstall it — or pay an exorbitant price — later.

(My thanks to all-around good guy Seth Bareiss for his help in researching this topic.)

UPDATE 2009-11-12: In the Nov. 12 Top Story, Woody Leonhard describes how to clean-install Windows 7 from the upgrade disc and also answers other reader questions about Windows 7.

Woody Leonhard‘s latest book, Green Home Computing For Dummies, just hit store shelves. His encyclopedic Windows 7 All-In-One For Dummies will be available in most bookstores and computer stores worldwide in October.

Known Issues

Add Adobe to the list of update opportunists

By Dennis O’Reilly

Many software vendors see security updates and bug fixes for their applications as a chance to install unrelated — and uninvited — programs onto your PC.

One vendor guilty of this offense — and not cited in Susan Bradley’s Aug. 13 Top Story on this subject — is Adobe, which preselects the option to install the Google Toolbar along with its Flash Player and Adobe Reader patches.

Pete Poorman points out that Adobe has been doing this for many years:

“While not as egregious an offense as Sun’s promotion of Carbonite, Adobe certainly deserves to be in the Installers Hall of Shame.

“First, the initial installation of Flash Player and Adobe Reader both default to installing the Google Toolbar. While not a for-pay commercial offering, Google Toolbar is completely unrelated to the core function of Flash Player and Adobe Reader — just as Carbonite is completely unrelated to Java. At a minimum, the default should be to not install this toolbar. Adobe doubles down on this offense by also defaulting to install the Google Toolbar when the Flash Player is updated.

“Second, Adobe all but forces the installation of the Adobe Download Manager (Adobe DLM) ActiveX control in order to install or update the Flash Player. At less than 2MB, the Flash Player doesn’t require a download manager to ensure successful downloads. This apparently unneeded complication raises questions about the true purpose of Adobe DLM.

“In addition, when I’m updating software to fix a security hole, I do not want to install another potentially unsafe piece of software from that vendor, especially software that’s of a class (ActiveX control) that is a frequent vector for malware.”

To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, it seems the price of a secure PC is eternal vigilance — about the marketing practices of the very companies we buy our software from.

Gmail activity log defeats a hack attack

The Aug. 13 Known Issues column included a letter from a reader named James who described how to use the Gmail activity log to discover unauthorized use of an account. The log came in very handy for Dan Juroff:

“In reference to Mr. O’Reilly’s piece on the Gmail activity log, I would like to report that the feature was recently very helpful to us in identifying the source of unauthorized accesses to one of our user’s accounts. (Our e-mail is hosted by Google.)

“When one of our users discovered one morning that all the mail in his Sent folder had been deleted from the Gmail server, he contacted me and I immediately went to his location to examine his account, which he left open until I arrived. Even though the log lists only the last five IP addresses from which access had been made, it so happened that two of those were from IPs other than our own.

“A ‘who-is’ on both addresses revealed their ownership, including one that was owned by the same ISP we use. Our provider was more than happy to identify the organization to which the IP was assigned, which happened to be that of another academic institution which, in turn, happened to be the current employer of one of our past employees. While with us, the former employee was working in a tech-support position and had — in a convoluted way — been given access to numerous e-mail passwords.

“In addition, I found that forwarding had been enabled in the victim’s account settings and that an e-mail account had been inserted there, to which copies of all incoming mail were being forwarded. Naturally, the victim had no knowledge of the forwarding account and didn’t even know how to set up the forwarding feature to begin with.

“The manner in which those passwords were obtained is another good lesson to us all. The passwords were actually provided to him by employees for the purpose of setting up accounts for use with a student information system. When setting up their accounts for the program, our friend would ask them to provide a password.

“As you know, most people will use the same password over and over again, so when providing him a password, they would commonly give him the same password they used for everything else, including their e-mail accounts. Armed with a list of passwords, all he had to do was experiment with them to see if he could access their e-mail accounts with them. I’m sure most of them were successful.

“It was pure, dumb luck that I got into the activity log before the owner accessed his mail a couple more times, as each new access bumps the oldest one off the list. It should be noted, however, that Google will provide a 30-day history but that a release must be completed by the account holder granting permission to do so.

“Hope you enjoyed this story of espionage and intrigue. Keep up the good work, guys!”

There’s more than one object lesson in Dan’s account: instruct users to report anything suspicious about their account; convince them of the need to use unique passwords for each service they use; and keep tabs on the whereabouts of former IT staff members.

Most recent Java update may not be offered

Susan’s story referred to Sun’s Java SE Update 16, which was released just a few days after Java SE Update 15 and included the security updates and bug fixes of the previous patch. After the newsletter was published, it was learned that not all users would receive Update 16, so some people with Update 15 would be told by the Java updater that their current version was the latest available.

If your PC has Java SE Update 15, you may not need the more-recent release and may indeed consider your system up-to-date.

Readers Pete and Dan will each receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for sending items we printed. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page.

The Known Issues column brings you readers’ comments on our recent articles. Dennis O’Reilly is technical editor of WindowsSecrets.com.

Wacky Web Week

Annoying tweeters meet their zombie demise

Tweetlejuice: eater of boring twitter souls

By Stephanie Small

We all know them: Twitter addicts who constantly update their status with such breaking news as “I’m bored” or “I’m soooo glad it’s sunny out!” What makes these people think anyone cares?

Well, annoying tweeters — beware! The rest of us can just tweet tweetlejuice three times to our most-aggravating Twitter friends, and the “ghost with the most” will eat their irritating little Twitter souls. At least then someone might actually be interested in knowing “what are you doing?” (Warning: gross behavior depicted.) Play the video

Bonus

Everything Windows 7 available at your fingertips

This month’s free bonus download for all our subscribers is Windows 7 All-in-One for Dummies by our very own contributing editor Woody Leonhard. The book provides valuable information about making the transition to Windows 7 for the novice to the expert computer user. The printed volume isn’t in stores yet, but all subscribers can receive our exclusive excerpt of two full chapters now through September 9. Simply visit your preferences page, save any changes, and a download link will appear. Thanks! —Brian Livingston, editorial director

All subscribers: Set your preferences and download your bonus
Info on the printed book: United States / Canada / Elsewhere

LangaList Plus

Delete files that Windows labels ‘undeletable’

By Fred Langa

Never again be prevented from removing an unwanted file by the rude “access denied” message in Windows!

With the right free tool, you can easily delete files and folders that are locked, in use, or otherwise untouchable.

There’s no such thing as a file you can’t delete

Sooner or later, almost every PC user runs into a situation where some file or folder resists all normal methods of deletion. I regularly receive e-mails from readers asking me what they should do in this situation. As part of the solution, I described how to remove “undeletable” malware in my Dec. 4, 2008, column.

But the question comes up so often that it’s worth providing a “once and for all” answer. The following tricks cover a wide range of circumstances. I hope you’ll refer to these pointers whenever the problem crops up for you, as it surely will again.

A recent e-mail from David Henderson serves as my jumping-off point. David asks specifically about GPS software files, but the same issue can occur with all types of files in all versions of Windows:

“I recently updated my GPS map files from Garmin. After I finished, I uninstalled the Garmin program. I now have Garmin files remaining that can’t be deleted. I even tried a command-line delete, with no success. Please tell me how to get rid of these files.”

The most common reason for undeletable files is that they’re marked as “in use” — even if they really aren’t. Windows won’t remove a file that it thinks is currently open, because the operating system is attempting to avoid instability.

Alternatively, some software programs — either by accident or through bad design — create files with nonstandard, invalid names or other attributes that Windows can’t handle. Some malware does this deliberately, making the infected files difficult to clear out.

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Best Software

New browser combines best of three worlds

By Ian “Gizmo” Richards

You no longer have to choose between Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome as your browser of choice.

A new contender in the increasingly crowded field combines all three engines behind one easily customizable interface.

It’s what’s beneath the hood that counts

If you want to start a heated discussion among a group of computer enthusiasts, just ask them, “What’s the best Web browser?” Among the Firefox supporters, Opera freaks, Chrome devotees, Safari adherents, and even the occasional Internet Explorer advocate, you’re bound to be sternly lectured as to why their particular browser favorite is the best.

However, this argument may be history. There’s a new browser in town that combines the engines from all the major browsers into a single, easy-to-use package.

This all-in-one browser is called Lunascape — an appropriate name, because it has arisen out of the blue. It originated in Japan, where it has a substantial following and sizable installed base.

Lunascape may be downloaded from the vendor’s site. The initial download is 8.42MB, plus additional downloads for the Gecko and WebKit engines, if required.

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Insider Tricks

Bolster your security with top-notch free tools

By Erik Larkin

If you entrust your security to a single antivirus app, your PC might well become a casualty some day.

To make sure you win the malware war, you need the multiple lines of defense provided by the advanced features of two of my favorite free services.

Give your antivirus software a torture test

You can drastically improve your security by using two free tools that thwart crooks’ primary methods of attack: (1) luring you to download a bogus security program and (2) exploiting software that you’ve left unpatched.

To avoid being tricked into downloading a fake utility, check for the product in the list of approved anti-malware products that’s maintained by Virustotal. To protect your apps from remaining unpatched, use some little-known features of Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector.

Virustotal helps you thwart scare jobs that try to con you into downloading fake anti-malware programs. If you fall for such a ruse and actually install a phony security app, it might go undetected by your PC’s AV program. (After all, you probably clicked OK more than once to download the file.)

The impostor will have a much-harder time, however, concealing itself from all of the 41 different antivirus engines Virustotal currently uses to identify suspicious files.

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The Windows Secrets Newsletter is published weekly on the 1st through 4th Thursdays of each month, plus occasional news updates. We skip an issue on the 5th Thursday of any month, the week of Thanksgiving, and the last two weeks of August and December. Windows Secrets is a continuation of four merged publications: Brian's Buzz on Windows and Woody's Windows Watch in 2004, the LangaList in 2006, and the Support Alert Newsletter in 2008.

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