Anilrgowda

Descriptions on how to crack the anti-piracy technology of Vista have been surfacing all over the internet over the past weeks. Most of them requiring rather sophisticated techniques. It's all water under the bridge now: We found out that here is a rather simple trick, one you may not believe at first –at least we didn’t. Soon, our main question was how Microsoft could have missed something so obvious.
How it all startedIn Asia illegal copies of the final Version of Windows Vista are in circulation and a copy costs approximately 3 US-Dollar. The really interesting part is that there is no product key for Vista on the DVD Cover, rather a simple step-by-step description on how to circumvent the activation routine.how to circumvent the activation routine.You’re supposed to power up the system and set the BIOS date to 2099. Afterwards you can start the installation process. According to the description Windows Vista can then be used for the next 92 years and the activation routine won’t annoy you - even if you adjust the date on the desktop.
Our TestWe tried the BIOS trick and it works. Even Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage Validation (WGA) considered our copy to be genuine.
Of course the activation check of Vista displays information that within 30 days we have to activate the OS. But the Countdown only starts working if the set date on the Vista-Desktop comes close to the one configured in the BIOS. I.e. if you set the BIOS date to 12/12/2099, then the routine will show 30 days remaining for the activation until 12/12/2099 is reached, even if the Desktop date has been changed and doesn't match the BIOS date. On 12/13/2099 the countdown starts working and theoretically the activation would be due in mid of January 2100.
On a sidenote: Normally a product key is necessary for the installation of the OS. With our Test-Version - the MSDN-Version of Vista , which is identical to the ones floating around on the internet - this isn’t the case. Users may enter a product key, but must not necessarily do so. If Vista is installed without a product key, then the activation routine should actually prevent the illegal use.Initially, we couldn’t quite believe it: Simply tricking the BIOS didn’t work under XP years ago and suddenly it is supposed to work under Windows Vista? How could Microsoft have made such a mistake? Therefore, we contacted Microsoft and got a quite unexpected answer.

Microsoft told us: Though the BIOS trick works, it won’t for long. The software giant explained to us that there is a mechanism hidden deep within Windows Vista. It keeps track of how long it's been since the OS has been up and running without activation. And after 90 days this mechanism just turns off the OS.
Since Microsoft didn’t go into the details of how the mechanism exactly works, our best guess is that some kind of internal counter (sort of a backup) exists and it probably runs independently from Desktop and BIOS date. We don't know if it's true or not, but we are going to carry out a long-run test...