Running Vista Without Activation For 1 Year

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ComputerWorld says that you can run a legitimate installation of Windows Vista for a year without activating it. Microsoft calls it a “hack” the researcher that found the loophole calls it a “feature.”

Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.
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So the security features of Vista continues to boggle the mind. This reminds me of the days when hackers released the tools for XP Pro users to change to an XP Corp. key to not have to worry about activation. Oh, memories. ;)
 
ComputerWorld said:
Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.
Click to expand...

What does he mean by "it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely." Dont they know that "feature" already exists?
 
Aratech said:
What does he mean by "it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely." Dont they know that "feature" already exists?
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Where is this feature that you so speak of... I don't think the author was talking about hacking anything, just a simple comand to reset the timers.
 
Ockie said:
Where is this feature that you so speak of... I don't think the author was talking about hacking anything, just a simple comand to reset the timers.
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The author claims what he is using is a "feature" but MS clearly calls it a hack. I'm not sure if I can point you to this information in this thread. I dont want a mod to consider it a violation of the rules.

Article said:
Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.
Click to expand...

He claims to be able to reset the time for one year and I was simply pointing out that a method to reset it indefinitely has already been discovered.
 
Ockie said:
Where is this feature that you so speak of... I don't think the author was talking about hacking anything, just a simple comand to reset the timers.
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You just answered your own question.

"...hacking"

"...a command to reset the timers"
 
Doesn't this also mean that security/feature updates will not be available to download? Unless I understand wrong, you have to activate in order to receive these updates (I'm not talking about other tools available out there to activate).

I wouldn't want to run my machine for 1+ years without security updates! :eek:
 
cmosdos said:
Doesn't this also mean that security/feature updates will not be available to download? Unless I understand wrong, you have to activate in order to receive these updates (I'm not talking about other tools available out there to activate).

I wouldn't want to run my machine for 1+ years without security updates! :eek:
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I just installed my shiny new copy of Vista Home Premium the other day, but haven't activated yet (testing things out before I waste an activation). As of now I've received 7 updates through automatic update service specifically for Vista (not Windows Defender or anything like that). I don't know if they are security updates or not, but I am receiving something.
 
Aratech said:
What does he mean by "it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely." Dont they know that "feature" already exists?
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This is what surprised me as well ! Its already out in the wild and has been for at least 2 months,possibly more.I used it for a while..ok I am still using it right now,and I have rearmed twice now.And I didnt find out about this on the net or [H],but though my Uni's Engineering Dept. :D Allot of people at my Uni are doing this,and have been doing it for a while.
 
I guess we're gonna have to wait longer for the bigger flaws and security holes to come out, but if this is all the hackers can come up with for now, thats a pretty good sign I think. Anyone know how long it took them to find a big security hole when XP came out?
 
markt435 said:
Anyone know how long it took them to find a big security hole when XP came out?
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At the pace of the hackers that love to target Windows Xp Home or Xp pro, I would say at least a good week or 2 weeks.

As long as Microsoft puts out an OS that people can hack away at, Hackers or programmers will continue to find security holes or flaws to it. You would think in the days of Windows XP that this flaw in the activation would be fixed, nope they let it progress onto Vista and or the next successor to vista.
 
Whats interesting is that these hacks don't seem to work for the 64bit version...at least yet anyway. Makes me happy I'm running it :D
 
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