Windows Vista Blog

How To: Extend the Windows Vista Evaluation Period for One Year

March 19th, 2007 by SysAdmin

Following on from the Extending the Windows Vista Evaluation to 120 days tutorial, I will now show you how to legally extend the evaluation period for up to one year.

Extending the Windows Vista Evaluation Period

• Click Start (Windows Orb)
• In the Instant Search box type “regedit” and then press the Enter Key
• Navigate to the path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SL
• Right Click the registry key SkipRearm and then click Edit
• The default is a Dword with the hex value of 00000000. Change the value to any positive integer, such as 00000001. Save the change and close the Registry Editor.

Now start a command prompt with Administrative rights.

• Click Start (Windows Orb)
• In the Instant Search box type “cmd” and then press the Ctrl+Shift+Enter Keys.

Type one of the following commands and then press the Enter Key.

• slmgr -rearm
• rundll32 slc.dll,SLReArmWindows

Reboot the computer. Once you’ve logged back in, open a command prompt and run the following command slmgr -xpr. This will show the Windows Vista’s new expiration date and time.

Repeat the above steps to extend the Windows Vista Evaluation Period.