2008-11-18

How to escape from blocked unactivated Vista

Few times I was pissed off by this screen:
It means that I haven't activated Vista on time and Microsoft stopped liking me. The problem is that at least two times I was caught by this screen when I haven't got access to the net. I had password to WiFi, but haven't entered it yet. When Vista is blocked you don't have access to any networking settings so the password is useless. Yet another time, because of bug in Vista I needed to reenter my windows key. Of course the easiest way to get the key is to use KeyFinder rather than waste time on searching the key. Which, in the end, would probably be somewhere online - like in MSDNAA.

Fortunetely you can easily escape from the blocked Vista. This is how you can do it. After clicking "Activate now" this screen appears:

Just choose "buy a new product key online", which would spawn a new browser window. I had Opera set as default browser, but any browser should work. The trick is to enter "c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" as the url.
We want to run this magic program.
Next, the well known black cmd dialog should appear. We're back home :) Just enter "explorer" to run the usual windows Start menu and task bar.
That's it. You now have normal access to your computer. You can then configure wireless networks or do whatever you like.

The only problem is to remember this instructions in case you won't have access to the internet.



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