其实，微软在Vista激活上的态度十分宽松，如果不是此前某些组织做得过火——擅自架设Vista激活服务器，微软甚至愿意“悄悄”提供给用户免激活长期使用Vista的方式。
事实上，只需将Vista注册表中一个键值从0改为1，就可以无限次延长Vista激活最后期限——微软甚至在自己的Technet网站上提供了相关说明文档。
不过，某些 不良PC销售商有可能利用这一“漏洞”欺骗消费者，声称提供正版Vista激活——而用户至少要到几个月甚至一年后才会发现。
当然，相对目前网络上流行的Vista破解方式，这种“合法”途径需要进入注册表修改，而且有可能需要多次进行激活，并算不上方便，不适合普通用户使用，对注册表较为了解的用户倒是可以尝试一下。
The following describes the Registry key that’s involved.
Step 1. While running a copy of Windows Vista that hasn’t yet been activated, click the Start button, type regedit into the Search box, then press Enter to launch the Registry Editor.
Step 2. Explore down to the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ SL
Step 3. Right-click the Registry key named SkipRearm and click Edit. The default is a Dword (a double word or 4 bytes) with a hex value of 00000000. Change this value to any positive integer, such as 00000001, save the change, and close the Registry Editor.
Step 4. Start a command prompt with administrative rights. The fastest way to do this is to click the Start button, enter cmd in the Search box, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. If you’re asked for a network username and password, provide the ones that log you into your domain. You may be asked to approve a User Account Control prompt and to provide an administrator password.
Step 5. Type one of the following two commands and press Enter:
slmgr -rearm
or
rundll32 slc.dll,SLReArmWindows
Either command uses Vista’s built-in Software Licensing Manager (SLMGR) to push the activation deadline out to 30 days after the command is run. Changing SkipRearm from 0 to 1 allows SLMGR to do this an indefinite number of times. Running either command initializes the value of SkipRearm back to 0.
Step 6. Reboot the PC to make the postponement take effect. (After you log in, if you like, you can open a command prompt and run the command slmgr -xpr to see Vista’s new expiration date and time.
Step 7. To extend the activation deadline of Vista indefinitely, repeat steps 1 through 6 as necessary