Run Windows Vista for 120 days free and legally

You are able to run Windows Vista for 120 days without entering a product key legally. This process is called “rearming” windows and is supported by Microsoft with a tool supplied within Windows Vista called slmgr.vbs which is located in your c:\windows\system32 directory.

To do this you will need to open up an elevated  command prompt window by clicking on “Start -> All Programs -> Accessories”, Right Clicking “Command Prompt” and selecting “Run as administrator” then click Continue to the User Account Control dialogue. This is very important as the below command will not work in a normal command prompt as you need administrator rights for the tool.

In the “Administrator: Command Prompt” window type cscript slmgr.vbs -rearm as shown below.

After a little while (5 secs to up to a min) the below text will appear stating that the command completed successfully and that you need to restart your computer.

That’s it restart your computer and you will have another 30 days. This process can only be done up to 3 times legally giving a total of 120 days depending on when you rearm.  After which you will need to enter a valid product key or reinstall windows from scratch.

It is very important that you rearm your system before any of the 30 day periods expire because if it does expire then rearming will not work. I suggest waiting till there is 1-2 days left if you use your computer everyday.

To check how many days you have left to activate click on Start and Right Click “Computer” and select Properties.

Create a Random Number for use as Passwords with Excel

As a network administrator you will most likely get asked to create a list of users and import those users into a new application or domain. I’ve found that creating these users in Excel and saving as a CSV file to be the easiest way to do this for most circumstances as excel is great with working with tabled data and you can manipulate strings.

To create a random number of any length to be used as a password I tend to use the following function within excel:

=((RAND()*(10-1))+1)*100000)

This will create a 6 digit number between 100000 & 999999. For a 4 digit password replace the 100000 with a 1000.

Next you will need to remove the decimal places. Do this by clicking on the “Format Cells: Number” button circled in the picture below.

Next select Number from the category and place a zero in the decimal places section.

Now save the document out as a CSV and away you go.

No Telnet in Windows Vista

The Telnet client is not installed by default in Windows Vista. To install it you do the following:

Click Start -> Control Panel -> Programs -> Turn Windows Features On and Off (Admin rights needed for this step) -> Scroll down and Select Telnet Client then click Ok.

Your Windows Vista CD will NOT be required at least it was not when I followed these steps under Vista Ultimate.