Windows Vista / “restricted mode”. Why I will not purchase Windows 7.

Today Windows Vista booted into “restricted mode”, all I could access was FireFox (my default browser). See when Vista came out I went down to the store and picked up a copy of “Ultimate” for $300. Later I found out it was the upgrade. Being a power user I am always changing hard drives (when SSDs came out, and then 3 months later when my $400 solid state drive crashed I had to switch drives again). Just installing on a new drive is a pain. Everytime I try to install I get “this product key is for users with existing installations of XP only”. Which I DID have an existing installation of XP, 4 years ago when I bought this thing.

So it is pretty well known you can just leave the serial blank, and install as a trial. But then you get nagging activation prompts. Where does this leave users who discarded their old XP disks or simply do not feel a paying customer should have to go thru the hassles put in place to stop the pirates? Well, we are basically relegated to becoming pirates ourselves.

So I downloaded a “crack” that supposedly activated my machine (and believe me I tried to call support to get them to remedy my issue first, they basically give you a nice “fuck you”). So today I boot up and get presented with a nice “restricted mode” where they launched FireFox to the “buy windows” page. I thought to myself “but I already bought windows, based on the fact you are doing this to me there is no way I am NOT going to go out of my way to stop microsoft from getting a single more penny from me or anyone I know. But I regress).

Since I was already in a web browser I figured I would try to visit various websites. The whole internet worked. I could even visit piratebay.org and launch utorrent. Great I thought, I’ll find some crack and we’ll be set. Only problem is in “restricted” mode they limit the number of running programs. Trying to run more then just 2 or 3 programs I would get “no quota available”. I had no access to cntrl+alt+ delete or the start menu or any of those features.

Well this was starting to suck. Long story short here is the process I found that worked, to activate windows and get me out of “restricted mode”. As per these instructions, I edited the registry key. I will break it down step by step.

• Click “File” -> “save page as” in your web browser, a save dialog opens up
• In the text field that says “File Name” type “C:/Windows/system32″ (without the quotes, and press enter)
• Under File Types choose all files, in file name again type cmd.*, you should see cmd.exe, right click and run as aministrator, if you get a quota error exit open programs and try again
• Type “regedit” into the command prompt and press enter. If you get errors close running programs such as your web browser and retry.
• # Navigate to this path:
  ** HKLM\SOFTWARE \Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SL
  # Double-click SkipRearm and change the value to 1. Close regedit
• Back in cmd.exe run the command “slmgr -rearm” (without quotes), about 45 seconds later you will get a success dialog, it will be out of focus and you could miss it, since you have no taskbar. If you get errors from this command after running it multiple times it most likely worked the first time!
• You can type explorer.exe now to get a new task bar, but must reboot to remove quota restrictions
• Download a windows crack and patch your machine ASAP. Use this Vista Activation.exe http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/50285146/windows+activation?tab=summary

That’s it folks, it sucks it came down to this, but Microsoft gave us no other choice. They actively went out of their way to inconvenience a paying customer, first they spent their development resources implementing the above pain in the ass techniques, rather than fixing bugs that were present in XP and didn’t get fixed with the upgrade to vista. Why not develop a product instead of a licensing scheme, Microsoft? They actively went out of their way to not put any language on the box informing me what I was going to get for my $300 purchase. They actively went out of their way to train their phone support teams to reject requests for help bypassing above mechanisms.

I run a software business myself, I think they should be allowed to charge an arm & leg if they want to. Where they cross the line is treating a paying customer this way, it is consumer fraud. Now, contrary to my intentions, people other than legitimate paying users may end up stumbling upon my instructions and bypassing their activations too. I’m sure piracy has it’s costs, but Microsoft forgot to factor in the costs of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

I was looking forward to Windows 7, but now I will not be purchasing it legitimately. I encourage anyone to follow in my footsteps. I would recommend to anyone to not obtain Windows 7 thru legitimate lawful ways.

Update: Microsoft sends me a copy of Windows 7 after 1 year of my life wasted bitching at them