If you’d like to know more about the licence on a Vista computer there’s a simple way to do that.
With product activation on Windows Vista it can be more than the standard ‘one time’ activation which applies to retail and small business versions.
For large deployments there are more complicated Volume Activation systems where machines regularly contact a host server to ensure it’s still ‘legal’ – these only apply to volume licence customers but can eventually disable a computer.
So, how to work out the exact licence status of a Vista system. In particular how long before the computer will re-check it’s licence status, which is important if the computer is about to be detached from the network (eg a notebook or remote machine).
Go to a command prompt (aka DOS box) and enter the command:
slmgr.vbs -dli
This will display a dialog box with plenty of detail about the Vista licence. Be patient, it may take sometime to show up.
For standard retail purchases, it won’t show you much. Just the first few characters of the product key and a confirmation that it’s a retail licence.
But a volume licence using the new technologies will show a lot more detail, including the time until the next verification is required.
