All retail copies of Microsoft Windows 7 whether purchased with a new P.C. or as a boxed product will need to activate their product within thirty days of installation or be faced with a pop up screen that reminds them to do so every hour.
Many people take advantage of this ‘feature’ to evaluate a copy of Microsoft Windows 7 for hardware and software compatibility before committing to Windows 7 and tying the installtion to that one machine permanently. Sometimes however thirty days isn’t quite enough, and users could do with more time.
There is a little known vbScript called the Software Licensing Manager included in Windows 7 that allows the user to extend the activation period to allow more testing time.
To extend your activation period:
- Click the Windows Orb
- In the Search Box type cmd
- Right click the ‘cmd‘ shortcut that appears and select ‘Run As Administrator‘.
- In the command window type in slmgr.vbs -rearm
Once the script has completed its work you will find that the activation period has now been re-set to 30 days.
Note – If you are expecting to use this trick to constantly re-arm your copy of Windows because you are using an illegal product that cannot be activated, you are wrong. There is a limit of four ‘re-arms’, so the most you can get out of an installation is 150 days (30 days for the initial installation and then four re-arms of 30 days each).