Extended Windows 7 beta period to 120 days

PaulSpoerry | January 10, 2009

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Microsoft postponed the rollout of the Windows 7 beta today, citing “very heavy traffic” on its Web site. Understand this, Microsoft has some serious hardware… think about the number of users who access MS properties daily; their servers did in fact end up showing a lot of users “Server is too busy” messages. Microsoft then announced that they would postpone the release of Windows 7 beta so they could build up their infrastructure to meet the demand. It seems a lot of people are excited about Windows 7.

When Windows 7 beta is released it will be a 30 day trial. That’s a decent amount of time to preview an OS (what I’ve played with so far looks pretty impressive though I’m still not totally onboard with the new task bar). But what it you need longer than 30 days to get a true feel for where Microsoft has taken their new OS?

By using the same “slmgr -rearm” command that gained notoriety after Windows Vista’s debut, users can extend that trial period to a total of 120 days. Extending the grace period, the spokeswoman continued, is not a violation of the Vista End User License Agreement (EULA). The one-line command of “slmgr -rearm” changes the activation deadline to 30 days after the current date.

A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the feature and command on Friday. “Yes, ‘rearm’ can be run up to three times from the release media from Microsoft,” she said in an e-mail response to some questions. “This means [that] a total of 120 days total time is available as a grace period to customers that take advantage of rearm.”