Windows 7: Activation Trial Period - Extend Up to 120 Days

Sounds shady to me.

Here's an interesting variation on the theme....

I'm trying out a funky RAID hardware config so I installed Windows 7 without the serial #. I used it for a few days, then messed up the RAID array and needed to rebuild the RAID array from scratch. I successfully restored Windows 7 from a Ghost image but apparently the rebuilt RAID array triggered the "hardware change" detector and now am facing the "1 day until automatic activation" message. I'm still testing out the config so I'd like to continue my trial. Will the technique in this tutorial work? slmgr.vbs -dlv says I still have 3 re-arms but I don't know if that gets honored after a significant hardware change.

Hello LunaDesign,

Yes, it should still work for you.

Thanks for the quick response!

However, I just tried it and it reset the timer from 1 day to 3 days, but not 30. Have you seen this behavior before?

Since it's going back to 3 days instead, my guess it that you checked the Automatically activate Windows when I'm online box during installation since up to 3 days is the default for automatic activation.

I'm not sure that you will be able to get around that other that rearming for another 3 days each time you get down to 1 until you activate it.

No, I'm 100% sure I left the serial # field blank and unchecked the checkbox. I'm guessing there must be a variable that changes the length of the re-arm from 30 days to 3 days after the hardware change detection.

Its not the end of the world....if I can get a few 3 day re-arms that should be long enough for me to complete my testing so I can be sure that I'm moving forward with this install.

Thanks!

You're welcome. I hope it will work for you.