Microsoft, which has created enough hurdles to get rid of piracy by making customers activate each and every product they purchase. If that is not enough they expect all the users to go through the scrutiny of genuineness validation. No comes the surprise. The same company also has created loopholes in Windows Vista for all of us to exploit. If you think that vista has only one month to activate you are wrong. The costliest version of Vista has -Vista Ultimate has nearly a year of use before you need to activate if you follow the these simple and not illegal hacking instruction from Windows Secret Guru Brian Livingston.

Brian in his Microsoft allows bypass of Vista activation article explains how simple SkipRearm trick can be used alog with a single change in Registry key to achive this. The seven steps needed to extend the activation deadline of Vista indefinitely are as follows

• Step 1. While running a copy of Windows Vista that hasn’t yet been activated, click the Start button, type regedit into the Search box, then press Enter to launch the Registry Editor.
• Step 2. Explore down to the following Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SL
• Step 3. Right-click the Registry key named SkipRearm and click Edit. The default is a Dword (a double word or 4 bytes) with a hex value of 00000000. Change this value to any positive integer, such as 00000001, save the change, and close the Registry Editor.
• Step 4. Start a command prompt with administrative rights. The fastest way to do this is to click the Start button, enter cmd in the Search box, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. If you’re asked for a network username and password, provide the ones that log you into your domain. You may be asked to approve a User Account Control prompt and to provide an administrator password.
• Step 5. Type one of the following two commands and press Enter: slmgr -rearm or rundll32 slc.dll,SLReArmWindows Either command uses Vista’s built-in Software Licensing Manager (SLMGR) to push the activation deadline out to 30 days after the command is run. Changing SkipRearm from 0 to 1 allows SLMGR to do this an indefinite number of times. Running either command initializes the value of SkipRearm back to 0.
• Step 6. Reboot the PC to make the postponement take effect. (After you log in, if you like, you can open a command prompt and run the command slmgr -xpr to see Vista’s new expiration date and time.
• Step 7. To extend the activation deadline of Vista indefinitely, repeat steps 1 through 6 as necessary.

Microsoft promptly labeled the registry change a “hack,” a loaded word that is usually synonymous with “illegal.” “Recently it has been reported that an activation hack for Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system has been identified,” said David Lazar, the director of the company’s Genuine Windows program, in an e-mail. “Although these reports are purely speculative at the moment, we are actively monitoring attempts to steal Microsoft intellectual property.”

“This is not a hack,” Livingston shot back when Lazar’s e-mail was read to him. “This is a documented feature of the operating system.” To back up his view, Livingston pointed out links to online support documents where Microsoft Knowledge Base article 929828.

As I have pointed out in this article (How to read *.hlp files on Vista) Windows Help program WinHlp32.exe was not included in Vista. Now Microsoft has released WinHlp32.exe for Windows Vista. Microsoft’s excuse for not including windows help program, was that program has not had a major update for many releases and no longer meets Microsoft’s standards. Therefore, starting with the release of Windows Vista, the Windows Help program will not ship as a feature of Windows. If you want to view 32-bit .hlp files, you must download and install the program (WinHlp32.exe) from the Microsoft Download Center. They are yet to update their Knowledge Base 917607

The updated version of Virtual PC 2007 has finally been released, and is free. If you’re planning on running Windows Vista in a VM or if you’ve got a computer with Virtualization Extensions in the processor and you plan on virtualizing anything go get this new version.

Some key features of Virtual PC 2007 include:

• Support for x64 Windows as a host operating system
• Support for hardware virtualization support
• Support for Windows Vista as a guest and host operating system
• Support for PXE network booting of virtual machines
• Support for the use of fullscreen virtual machines on multi-monitor systems (VM still stays on just one monitor though)

Download it, from the newly updated Virtual PC website: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx.