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Vista Can Run Without Activation for a Year

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the procrastinists-in-luck dept.

An anonymous reader gave us a heads up on this article for people who like putting things off. It begins: "Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end-run around one of Microsoft's key anti-piracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today. 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."

10 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Why bother? by BiggyP · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since microsoft have made it perfectly clear that they don't want anyone running their OS without paying, why continue to try, how about giving one of the many shiny desktop linux distros a go instead?

    --
    Software Freedom Day!.
    1. Re:Why bother? by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is what they say, but I don't think that's true. They rather have me running Vista illegally than running Linux legally. Why? Because it increases their market share, which in turn benefits to them. I am also more likely to choose Windows in my business decisions or demand Windows Vista from my employer because "that is what I know".

      For students and poorer people they damn well want them to pirate Vista.... They might one day become paying customers.

      Piracy is a form of advertisement, as odd as it may sound.

      (I run Debian Etch, thank you very much)

    2. Re:Why bother? by rucs_hack · · Score: 5, Funny

      1: Put gentoo cd in drive
      2: wade through the initial setup in the voluminous manual
      3: try to work out how the hell textmode web browsers work
      4: discover gnome won't emerge and compile because you don't have -tk set as a USE flag
      5: Try to figure out what the fuck a USE flag is anyway
      6: Spend a day trying to set up X.org
      7: mistakenly try to compile Openoffice from source
      8: wait...
      9: wait....
      10: wait....
      11: Find that your config files need updating.
      11: Realise Gnome is screwed because you updated the config files wrong
      12: Give up on Gnome, try to install KDE
      13: wait..
      14: wait....
      15: wait.....
      16: find that something you want is masked, unmask it. Smiling happily as it compiles
      17: slowly realise that you've done something very very bad...
      18: Give the fuck up and try Fedora instead

    3. Re:Why bother? by Red+Flayer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dear Sir,

      We have asked your piano tuner to forward this letter to you in advance of our filing lawsuit against you in federal court for copyright infringement under the auspices of the recently passed Copyright Act for Analog Playback (CrAAP). We represent a number of large record companies, including SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, as well as all of their subsidiaries ("Record Companies,") in perusing claims of copyright infringement against individuals who have illegally played copyrighted works on their pianos to an audience.

      We have gathered evidence that you have been infringing copyrights owned by the Record Companies. We are attaching to this letter a sample of the sheet music found in your stool drawer. In total, you were found to be potentially playing to an audience 321 songs, a substantial number of which are songs controlled by the Record Companies.

      The reason we are sending you this letter to you in advance of filing suit is to give you the opportunity to settle these claims are early as possible. If you contact us within the next twenty (20) calendar days with proof that you have destroyed any mecxhanism for the analog playback of potentially copyrighted music, we will offer to settle the claims for a significantly reduced amount compared to the judgment amount a court may enter against you...

      IF WE DO NOT HEAR FROM YOU IN TWENTY (20) DAYS WE WILL FILE SUIT AGAINST YOU IN FEDERAL COURT.

      Sincerely, Douchebag McNumbnuts

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  2. How long before Microsoft patches Vista by lthown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, they do have this little windows update thing that sends out updates, I'm sure it's mostly trivial for them to fix the flaw

  3. Why Vista? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, delaying activation is fine, but why would you want Vista in the first place? My laptop died recently and I bought a replacement Thinkpad. It came pre-loaded with Vista Business. I gave it a try for two weeks.

    - Despite having 1GB RAM, the laptop ran like a glued snail.
    - Network speed was inconsistent and seems to be bound to movements of the sun.
    - Many printers (including my HP 2600n) are still unsupported. Not sure if this is HP being their usual crap self or just a complete inability to get Vista to play properly with network printers.
    - Aero. Why?
    - So many features like "Map Network Drive" have now been moved so they can only be access from specfic areas like "My Computer"
    - The updated XP style for control panel etc is really frustrating.
    - When opening some MS Office 2007 applications, the screen would corrupt then everything would hang for about 3 minutes.
    - Maybe a problem with Vista's sound libraries? Music sounded tinny through Vista, but cleaner in XP on the same machine.

    Anyways, enough of that bollocks. I've wiped the whole disk and installed XP pro again.

    1. Re:Why Vista? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Many printers (including my HP 2600n) are still unsupported. Haha. You were suckered into the age-old "host based printer" scam. "Host based" printers don't internally support a standard printer language like PostScript or PCL. Instead, the printer only supports a proprietary protocol which requires a specialized, vendor-provided OS-specific driver. Only in a few cases have people been able to reverse-engineer a subset of these protocols.

      A major disadvantage to this for consumers that it allows manufacturers to "sunset" older printers.

      That's why I only buy standards-based printers - it allows me to decide when my printer is no longer viable. All of my printers are more than 10 years old, and I have no plans to retire any of them.

      Printer manufacturers don't provide host based printers in order to save inordinate amounts of money per unit - the chipsets required to support PCL and/or postscript are very inexpensive. This is all about vendor control.
  4. This isn't news by cdrudge · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are hacks out there to modify the countthe activation timer so that it never times out. The cracking group Parardox also supposedly released a crack that is suppose to emulate a bios to bypass the activation process all together.

  5. Very Exciting, but already done by ehaggis · · Score: 5, Funny

    My Linux box runs for at least a year without activation also.

    --
    One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
  6. Re:Edit the SkipRearm Key by SkipRearm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hi ! I'm Skip, Skip Rearm.