Shortly after the initial leak of Vista, the activation was already cracked. To be exact it was around one day. The information was posted on a torrent site. It allows you to use the pre-release keys that Microsoft so willingly gave so many of. Here are the basic instructions to activate it:
1. Browse to WindowsSystem32Licensingpkeyconfig folder,right-click pkeyconfig.xrm-ms Open property, click Security > Advanced > Owner > Edit > Administrators.
Click OK and close the propertes.2. Then re-open properties of the file, Click Security > Advanced > Edit > select Administrators and click Edit.
Click “Full Control”, Click OK and close the properties.3. Reboot into safe mode
Replace ‘pkeyconfig.xrm-ms’ using the one in this package.
Go to Start > Run > type “services.msc” and find “Software Licensing”. Normally this ain’t running, but if it is
you need to stop it with the stop button above.4. Goto Windows Service Profiles Network Service AppData Roaming Microsoft SoftwareLicensing
Replace the tokens.dat from this package with the one there.5. Reboot into normal mode again.
Go to Start > Help & Support > type “Activate” in the search menu. Click on the third topic “Activate Windows on this Computer”
This will start Windows Activation. You can use almost any key here, if you have gotton a Beta1/Beta2/RC1/RC2 key from Microsoft
And the torrent can be found here. The Final version of Vista can be found on torrentspy.
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