taskkill /F /IM wlms.exe & takeown /f %windir%\System32\wlms\wlms.exe & icacls %windir%\System32\wlms\wlms.exe /deny *S-1-1-0:(X) & shutdown -a

Arris: I don’t think so. A solution might be to do a clean install, install all software you want and create a disk image using disk imaging software. After creating the image use it for 240 days, then backup files/settings, revert to previously created image and use it again for 240 days. The only thing I’m not sure about is whether it can be activated online multiple times…

Man I wish I’ve had the time I had last year so I could test these kind of things but unfortunely that’s not the case anymore. Things in your life tends to change so damn quick it’s not fun anymore.

Using the alternate validation method, I was able to download and install a theme off of the microsoft download site. I’m still not sure if my windows is perceived as genuine or not. But I will continue to use it anyways.

My suggestion would be that upon install, one would use that grace period to update and install all possible updates and software that require validation. Then force ownership and remove (not delete) the offending files. Update your registry, after making a backup that is. So when you want to validate sometime in the future, you can by setting the date back (did mine through bios), restoring your registry and files. This should work as that’s what I’ve gathered so far. As long as the update certificate is valid it should work fine. But they are binaries so it’ll be harder to modify them. But at least one can get rid of the watermark and notification, although one is technically in notification mode at all times still.

Cheers

Great research and good job.

How is it working for you since you last wrote here? Any side-effects or other things that have showed up?

Try to test everything, absolutely everything and if it works try even more. Change date more both future and past, open Windows programs (Notepad, Wordpad etc etc things that says You’re not running genuine Windows if it knows it has been tampered with), change stuff, install features, shutdown services etc etc.

If you have a chance please tell us how if everything works for you.

Thanks in advance.

So I openned up Regedit and searched for “Genuine”. To my surprise there was a fairly complete list of keys and parameters to play with. Not sure about you guys but mine is located at:

Hkey_local_machine/software/wow6432node/microsoft/windows nt/currentversion/softwareprotectionplatform

Not a correct key but just to show where it is on mine. I changed “VLActivationInterval” to 900000 (decimal). In the activation folder I changed “ActivationInterval” to 0, “Manual” to 1 and “NotificationDisabled” to 1 also. There’s a few other values in there to play with as well. After setting my date to 2038, my laptop logs in just fine and does not display the watermark. It does tell me that I must activate immediately and as of yet I have not bothered to update.

I’m not sure if my enabling Themes has covered up the watermark but it’s no longer there.

Looks like there’s legacy activation classes still in there as well. Assuming one has enough time and experience one can make a patch to activate offline like they did with winXP or skip it altogether. Hope this helps somebody. Cheers.

I’m good thank you.

Well it totally depends on what you are going to use it for, I too used to work on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition a couple of years ago and found it very satisfying and pleasing to use, it suited my daily needs very well, it gave me so much more then XP didn’t in the long run.

I don’t actually think you can upgrade since it’s a server release but you can always perform a clean install and that’s what I always recommend, that way you can evaluate it properly, things tend to go wrong with upgrades, better safe then sorry as long that you always make proper backup of important files and documents.

Here’s what I recommend in your case, make backup of all things you want to save, then install a fresh copy of Windows Server 2008 R2, the version that fits you, Standard, Enterprise, Web or DataCenter.
Evaluate it and use it as you were using 2003, install your programs and make sure that they work and try other things to see if it is something you want to continue to use, if not you always have the chance of returning to your old trustworthy 2003 Edition.

If you are sitting on a 32-bit version today and planning to upgrade to Server 2008 R2 bare in mind that it’s a 64-bit release only so be sure that you get proper drivers for everything, though it shouldn’t be a problem anyway since you can install updates fine that are made for Windows 7 x64 and some programs you use might cause problems, but there is always solutions to problems, just try and see.
And also I recommend 2GB of RAM and up, 4GB is more then enough, 2GB is minimum.

I wish you luck, I think that you are going to be satisfied with it, it doesn’t take long to get used to things.

If you encounter any problems, be sure to stop by and I try to help you as best as I can.

Cheers!

i guess what i am affraid of is that after the eval period of the server 2008 r2 i will need to buy me a new hard copy of it and probably loose all my documents, whats your take on thata m8?

cheers

Well 2GB today for that kind of applications isn’t enough nowdays because sadly that’s the development today.
SQL Server 2005 probably takes less ram then 2008 and SQL Server 2000 takes even less ram then 2005.

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li2727 Laptop which have a Celeron Core 2 Duo 1.73 Ghz proccessor with 2GB ram and Windows Server 2008 R2 installed. Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and SQL Server 2005 SP3 works perectly fine with only minor slowdowns but if I would to install newer versions like you I too would notice heavier slowdowns.

If you have any possibility upgrade to 4gb and get the most out of your machine since newer applications today need more ram.

Well there isn’t many tuning tips more then shutdown unnecessary services and avoid the desktop experience feature which installs themes and other stuff you don’t really need.

I think more ram is the only solution in this case.

Best of luck!

I have uninstalled Windows Vista and installed WinServer 2008 R2.

I installed on my DELL inspiron 1525 laptop with following config. Inter Dual Core, 130GB HDD, 2GB RAM. I also have installed SQL Server 2008 Eval 64bit, SharePoint 2010 beta 64 bit, Visual Studio 2010 beta, Office 2010 beta, SharePoint Designer 2010 beta.

As far as performance is considered It is bit disappointing after my initial installation. When i just installed the OS alone the boot time was good. But after installing the above mentioned software the performance is not as expected. Sometimes even Internet explorer takes sometime to open. May be it is because I have only 2GB RAM.

Is there any performance tuning tips that can be done to improve the performance. Like tweaking the Virtual memory or something like that.

Have anyone installed WinServer 2008 on Laptop. How is the performance. If I increase RAM to 4GB will it help.

Please share you thoughts.

Thanks,
Kannan