Extend the Windows 7 Trial from 30 to 120 Days
Did you know that you can install Windows 7 without any license key and use it for 30 days? What you might not know is that you can also extend that trial mode to 120 days, without requiring a key.
The basic way this works is that at the end of the 30 days, you’ll need to run a small command and reboot your computer, at which point you’ll have 30 more days, up to a maximum of 120 days. This trick should work regardless of where you got your copy of Windows 7 from.
Note: make sure to check out our screenshot walkthrough of the Windows 7 Beta if you haven’t already, because Microsoft is giving away beta keys that don’t expire until August 1st.
Extending the Trial By 30 Days
The first thing you’ll want to do is check how many days are left in your trial period. You can do this by right-clicking Computer and choosing Properties…
At the bottom of this window you’ll see how many days are left to activate (29 in my case since I installed this box yesterday).
Now to actually perform the hack that will extend the trial mode, you’ll want to find Command Prompt in the start menu (or search for it), and then right-click on it and choose Run as administrator. (very important)
Next you’ll simply type in this command:
slmgr -rearm
Within a few seconds you’ll normally see this dialog show up, saying that the command has completed successfully, at which point you’ll want to reboot.
Checking the system properties again shows that I now have 30 days left to activate.
Of course you’d normally want to do this near the end, probably on the last day before activation. I’m pretty sure that you can even perform this trick after the 30-day trial expires, although I’m not certain yet.
Daily Email Updates
You can get our how-to articles in your inbox each day for free. Just enter your name and email below:
This is the exact same trick as for extending the Windows Vista trial period. You can do this after the 30-day period has expired, but if you’ve gotten to the point where it demands you enter a valid product key before logging on, you’ll have to do it from Safe Mode.
This will be helpful for testing out stuff and doing a bunch of reinstalls so you don’t need to activate.
howtogeek, could you at all try and find a link in which we can download windows 7 trial, i missed the 2.5 million download slots
ive looked on torrents but cant find a decent one
@rocky
You can grab it here… they have actually extended it til January 24th with no limit on the number of people.
http://www.microsoft.com/windo.....nload.aspx
@geek
i wasn’t aware of that, thanks alot, its appreciated.
Couldn’t you just completely reset your computer/laptop back to factory settings every 30 days? That’s what I used to do with my laptop in order to continue using trial based software before I found a patch.
Hi, If it’s the same as Vista, you can still rearm after the 30 days have expired and the machine has gone into reduced functionality mode. I seem to remember having to use IE (that it opens on a web page enabling you to purchase a product key) to navigate to C:/Windows/System32 (I think) and launch cmd.exe as admin from there. If you’ve left it any longer than that then it’s as Bob B says and boot into safe mode.
I only wish they had built this into XP (or ate least told us they had) as it was me you were probably shouting down a phone at when your new XP machine demanded to be activated every time a hardware configuration was changed.
Can’t you just disable internet access from the very beginning? That way information is not sent to microsoft. Unless you are dying to try out IE in Windows 7, wont this work?
@Kyle
No, i dont think that will work as when i installed Windows 7 about an hour ago it said 3 days before i need to activate windows, and that was before i installed my wireless driver.
Hi Geek, do you mean that throught this hack, we can actually use the Windows 7 beta until august 1 09?
@dinesh:
No, you still need to get a beta key if you want it to work through then. This is just a general thing that works without using a key, but only for 120 days total.
I ve got a bunch of keys from a site saying it alows 120 days trial. I am posting it here. They say they are microsoft original keys and are legit. Has anyone tried it. Does it work if so let me know would like to install win 7.
4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
QXV7B-K78W2-QGPR6-9FWH9-KGMM7
My trial was the standard 30 days.
But instead of saying X days to activate It says it is activated… does that mean the trial won’t end?
@Wilfred, The keys you provided do work, at least the first one. Did not have to try the second one.
If those keys allow 120 days trial then extending it 2 times gives full 9 months…
no, it extends to 120 days because you can rearm it twice more giving it an additional 30 days. Try a 3rd time and it will loff and loff at you. (Plus the beta has a built-in expiration date where they expect you to get the RC or full version, the RC comes out tomorrow)
I just executed “slmgr -rarm” on my trial version of Windows 7 Ultimate. It only renewed me to 3 days. Is there a hack that will extend me to one month or more??
@ Jim
You’ve used up one of the 3 rearms
this is a reg hack to enable more rearms tho (i think)
Your supposed to do this at the end of your 30 day trail
will run as date work with that
The W7 compatibility test revealed that my Microsoft Office Keyboard (RT9450) won’t work with W7. MS discontinued support of it back before Vista. For upgrading to Vista us RT9450 addicts (cut, copy, paste, and scroll wheel on the left side) used a work around using French Inteillitype Pro 5.0 driver.
I was hoping MS would offer another free 30-day trial of W7 (upgrade from Vista Ultimate to W7 Ultimate) so that I could install it on a Virtual drive and see if I can get the keyboard to work.
Anyone know of a new 30-day free trial offer?
Thanks,
Kerry
Like Kerry I have been trying to find an evaluation copy of W7 so that I can test it’s claims of running on old hardware and being “smaller”. I also want to run my old apps and do not want to throw more money in the MS direction only to be disappointed. Any suggestions would be welcome.
Thanks,
Nigel.
Ditto with Nigel’s comment. Lots of older hardware here – anyone know of a trial version of Windows 7? I might spring for a new OS, but I’m /not/ spending my hard earned money on new hardware and a new OS when Linux works peachy keen for me.
Thanks for the tip. But where does the 120 day tag in the article title come in?