A Friday Treat - 90 Bonus Days of Free Windows 7

Posted by Daniel Shain

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The Windows 7 trial officially runs for 30 days before asking you for your activation code - you know, that string of letters and numbers that proves you actually bought your copy of the OS. What's that you say? You lost it, and just need a few days to dig through your filing cabinet to find it? Don't worry, there is a not-so-secret-MS-approved hack to quadruple your trail to 120 days.

That's right - whether you really can't find it or are just too lazy to pick up the packaging from the floor where you deposited it after the install, the boys in Redmond have given their officially-unofficial approval for users to manipulate a loophole and get more time. A spokesman from Microsoft reportedly told Computerworld, "A total of 120 days total time is available as a grace period to customers that take advantage of rearm."

Rearm, you say? That's the name of the loophole. All a user has to do to enact the "rearming" is to load up the command prompt and type "slmgr -rearm". That's it. Do that after 30 days and reboot, and the timer goes back down to 0. The process can be repeated thrice before you actually have to buy the product, bend down to pick up the packaging at your feet, whatever.

It's sort of an... interesting tactic, don't you agree? Microsoft is kind of saying, let's let anybody not computer savvy enough to read the news (ie: far too many people) think they have to buy the product after 30 days, but let's let everyone else in on the secret to have more time. That way savvier users (ie: people who know enough to consider linux) can get a richer experience and also come off as 1337 hackers when they show their grandmothers how they can stop those annoying activation messages while they find their activation codes. You could also do this on Vista so it appears it must be working out if MS "neglected" to close this "loophole".

Via telegraph

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