Can Vista activation be circumvented?
At Windows Secrets, Brian Livingston has given a method that he says will allow you to use Windows Vista without activation for up to a year or more. Microsoft has not commented officially but a March 20 ComputerWorld article reports a Microsoft team blog entry that denies that Livingston’s procedure works. The article reports:
Microsoft yesterday declared that a technique to delay Vista’s activation as long as a year just “doesn’t work.” The researcher who published the activation extension claimed otherwise.
“A quick analysis determined that this purported workaround doesn’t work,” said Alex Kochis, senior product manager of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), in an entry on the team’s blog.
The blog has been Microsoft’s sole public response thus far to reports last Friday in Computerworld and elsewhere of research published that day by Brian Livingston, the editor of the Windows Secrets newsletter. Then, Livingston showed how a single change to Vista’s registry lets users put off the operating system’s product activation requirement for an additional eight months.
Note that even if the activation could be delayed, it would still not be possible to get updates or to download many Microsoft add-ins. In any event, it seems likely to me that Microsoft would soon plug any hole that let activation be staved off for so long.
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