During the past several weeks I have read a few articles published on the Internet and in newsletters, mentioning a legal feature built into Vista that extends the activation process from 30 up to 120 days. As I gave some thought to this procedure I was trying to understand the reasoning for this to begin with. Which also brought up something else in my mind. Why does Microsoft use 30 days to activate Vista? Why not 10, or 45, or 71 days?

Microsoft has a site via Technet that is designed for businesses in which the command is available for extending the activation period and in which they cover some situations where the activation may need to be extended. Some of the situation covered are:

• Not being able to connect the PC for online activation.
• Trouble obtaining a activation code.
• And the dreaded - activation thinks you got a illegal copy of Vista.

Which after reading the article then made some sense why users MAY just need to extend activation, if faced with one of these situations. This at least would keep the system from entering into a reduced functionality mode and allow the user time to contact Microsoft to get the problem corrected.
Microsoft Site - Activation

It is a long, very long article.
The command to extend activation in Vista is slmgr -rearm and it is a command line command.
And why 30 days to activate? I was told, why not 30 days?

Tags: vista, microsoft, windows, activation