To see how much time you have left in your current evaluation period, just type:įigure 3: Results of xpr command, showing the date and time that the license grace period for Win 2008 expires To do this, just type:įigure 2: Results after rearming your Win 2008 evaluation copy for another 60 days You can re-arm this evaluation of Windows 2008 using slmgr.vbs. Thus, you could evaluate Windows 2008 Server for a total of 240 days, or about 8 months – wow! While many admins do not know it, you can “re-arm” that evaluation period for another 60 days, three times over. An evaluation version of Windows Server 2008 will work for 60 days. If you are evaluating Windows Server 2008, you should know that license activation is not required. How can slmgr.vbs help with Evaluation licensing? Let’s see some examples of how Windows 2008 slmgr.vbs can help us. And finally, you can active a product with the confirmation ID using the –ato option.Display your installation ID, used by Microsoft for offline (telephone) activation, with the –dit option.Uninstall a certain product key with the –upk option.Reactive a Windows evaluation license with the –rearm option.Reinstall system license files with the –rilc option.Install a license with the –ilc option.Clear the current Windows product key from the registry for security reasons with the –cpky option.Show when the current Windows license will expire with the –xpr option.Display detailed license information with the –dlv option.Display license information with the –dli option.Active Windows 2008 with the –ato option.

Install product keys with the –ipk option.

The default machine to manage, if none is specified, is the localhost. A username and password is required for this.

Manage licensing not only on the local server but also on remote Windows 2008 Servers, over the network.

Here are the various tasks you can perform with slmgr.vbs:

This will pop up a help window that will give you all the slmgr.vbs options. To see what slmgr.vbs can do, you can simply run a Windows command prompt (with cmd) and type: This is a visual basic script used to configure licensing on any Windows 2008 Server – either the full version or the core version. The name actually stands for Windows Software Licensing Management Tool. Microsoft’s command line licensing tool is slmgr.vbs. In this article, you will learn how to use Microsoft’s command line tool for doing that – slmgr.vbs. It is important to know how to license your Windows 2008 Servers from the command line, to see how much time you have left in an eval, or uninstall licenses. Like it or not, Windows Server licensing is more critical than ever before with Windows Server 2008.

Rearm evaluation license