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Published
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January 30, 2009 |
Last Updated |
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February 25, 2009 |
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Introduction |
In a previous article,
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Note : This article was
written when Windows 7 was still in BETA 1, changes
might occur later to the product once it is RTM.
The evaluation period is also known as the
"activation grace" period. Any edition of
Windows 7 may be installed without providing a
product key, and
it may be evaluated for 30 days.
If you do not activate the software within the
grace period, you will receive persistent
notifications, including a message from the system
tray every 60 minutes that reminds you to 'Activate
Windows Now'. Also on-screen, there will be a
permanent notice that the copy of Windows is
"non-genuine," Microsoft's term for pirated or
not-yet-activated versions of the operating system;
a similar message appears whenever the user launches
the Control Panel, which houses Windows' settings
and options. Also, the desktop background will turn
to black. While you can change the plain black
background to any background you choose, if changed,
the background will reset to a plain black
background every 60 minutes, moreover you will
not be able to receive optional updates from Windows
Update unless the copy of Windows is activated.
Before the 30
evaluation days are over, you can run a simple
command to extend this "grace period" to another 30
days.
You can reset the 30 days evaluation period three
times, this will give you a total of
120 days
( 30 original
days + ( 3 resets x 30 days each ) ) .
When the Windows 7 setup is finished, the
evaluation period (30 days) starts. To find out how
many days are left in the evaluation period. you can
follow any of these two methods:
- To extend ( reset/rearm) the evaluation
period to another 30 days, click on
Start >
All Programs >
Accessories >
right click on Command
Prompt and click on Run as
administrator

If you have the User Access
Control feature set as default, then a
pop up box will appear and you will have to
click on
Yes
to confirm the action

- Type or paste the following command:
slmgr -rearm

- A confirmation message will be displayed,
stating that the command completed successfully, and that you will need to restart the machine in
order for the changes to take effect. So
reboot your machine.

- After your system reboots, confirm the changes, by going again into the
properties of Computer ( right
click on Computer icon > Click
on Properties ), under the
Windows Activation section you
will notice that the counter has been reset to
30 days.

Repeat these steps whenever the 30 days are
almost completed, that is when there is 1 or 2
days remaining, run the slmgr -rearm
command so that you gain another 30 days. Do not
run the command if you have enough remaining
days, that is if you have for example 20
remaining days and ran the command, you will
lose the 20 days and the counter will be reset
to 30 days. so the best thing to do to gain the
120 days is to run the command at the very last
day of the evaluation period.
Summary
You can install Windows 7 without providing any
product key. The evaluation period is 30 days. If you
didn't finish evaluation Windows 7 and don't want to provide your product key
at this time, then you can
simply extend the evaluation period three times to have
a total of 120 days to evaluate Windows 7.
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