Windows 7 Boot Floppy For OEM Activation

Although floppy diskettes are now obsolete and has become a thing of the past, they can be quite useful when Windows 7 or Windows Vista need to be activated. Floppy diskettes can only hold 1.44 MB of data, but that's enough for holding tools necessary for Windows activation. The floppy will contain MS-DOS system files, GRUB4DOS and tools to soft-mod the BIOS. Unfortunately, new and recent computers don't have floppy drives. Still, we can work around without a floppy if we use a USB flash drive or a bootloader, such as syslinux. Get the floppy image here.

• win7boot.flp

The bootable floppy runs a small program that artificially inserts OEM SLIC signature into BIOS for the purpose of Windows activation before booting into Windows. There are 3 utilities included in the floppy.

• loadslic.exe
• softmod.exe
• grub.exe

Loadslic and softmod do the same job of loading SLIC into BIOS. Softmod loads a file named SLIC.BIN into BIOS, but loadslic contains a SLIC code in itself. If you want to change the OEM SLIC loaded by loadslic, you have to hack the loadslic binary with a hex editor. The AUTOEXEC.BAT file by default runs softmod, but you can edit AUTOEXEC.BAT to have it run loadslic. The following is AUTOEXEC.BAT contents:

@ECHO OFF
SOFTMOD
GRUB

Get the SLIC file for your computer and save it as SLIC.BIN. Then, create an empty file named WIN7 in C:\BOOT folder. This file is used to tell GRUB which partition you want to boot. The following is MENU.LST contents that Grub uses to find and boot Windows.

timeout 0
default 0
fallback 0
hiddenmenu

title Windows 7
find --set-root /boot/win7
chainloader /bootmgr

Finally, write the floppy image to a floppy with Winimage and restart the computer. If you don't have a floppy, use another bootloader, such as syslinux, to boot from the floppy image. Once you get into Windows, use slmgr to activate Windows.

slmgr -ilc oemcert.xrm-ms
slmgr -ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Install GRUB4DOS and Use loadslic command to Activate Windows 7/Vista and Server 2008/2011

One of the activation methods available for activating Windows is by using the mechanism called “System Locked Pre-installation” (also known as SLP).

This method is widely used on computers and hardware sold by OEM manufacturers. Microsoft has come up with this scheme to allow hardware vendors to mass-produce and sell computers with Windows pre-installed. Computers that are activated using SLP method each have a vendor-specific signature embedded in the BIOS, called SLIC (software licensing description table).

To use the SLP method, the computer must have a special BIOS that has OEM SLIC signature. The SLIC signature is unique for each OEM computer-manufacturer. You may be tempted to flash the BIOS with a SLP-enabled BIOS, but it is not safe and may break the computer system or make it unbootable. There are safer alternatives, and the most widely used artificial SLP activation method is by using a special version of GRUB4DOS patched with loadslic command. The patched GRUB4DOS is able to allow SLP activation for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2011 and Windows Server 2008 (available here).

• OpenLoader.rar

First, use bootlace.com under DOS to install GRLDR bootstrap code to MBR. Alternatively, you can use install-mbr command under Linux to install generic MBR code to MBR. The reason for doing this is because the MBR code installed by Windows doesn't allow booting from non-Microsoft bootloader.

Then, with 7-zip (or WinRar or Winzip), copy the SCRIPTS folder from inside the OpenLoader.rar package to C:\Windows\Setup. Right-click on GRUB.CMD, and run it as Administrator. Upon reboot, a standard Grub4Dos menu is displayed with boot options. In the menu, you can choose one of several SLIC codes from major computer vendors. After choosing one and booting Windows with software-modified OEM SLIC BIOS, you should be able to activate Windows by using the slmgr commands like this.

slmgr -ilc oemcert.xrm-ms
slmgr -ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Using the slmgr script requires the Administrator privilege. Open the Command Prompt (cmd.exe) as Administrator and type the above commands. Replace oemcert.xrm-ms with the actual digital certificate for the hardware vendor listed in your BIOS. And type the actual 25-digit OEM key in place of XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX.

Activate Windows 7, Windows 8, Office 2010 and Office 2013 with KMS Nano

KMS Nano or KMSnano is a little KMS activation tool that works inside a Qemu virtual machine. It can be used to activate the following Microsoft products.

• Windows Vista Professional and Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise
• Microsoft Office 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010
• Microsoft Office 2013, Visio 2013 and Project 2013

KMS Nano can be found in a few places on the Internet. Try the following locations.

• heldigard latest KMS releases 17-12-2012
• LaDrunkv6.zip
  This package also includes Qemu.
• LaDrunkv6.zip
• LaSmartv5.2.zip
  This package does not include Qemu, therefore it is very small in size.

To Activate Office 2013

Office 2013, also known as Office 15, is the latest release of the flagship office productivity suite from Microsoft. If you installed Office 2013 using a corporate volume license edition DVD and want to activate your copy of the product, you have to use an activation method that may include setting up a KMS server and connecting to the KMS server. However, if installing a KMS server on a separate Windows machine is not a feasible option, there are PC virtualization methods in which you run a KMS server inside a virtual machine (perhaps using QEMU.) There are many packages available on the Internet that help you automate this process.

One such package is KMS nano, and can be downloaded using a bittorrent application, such as aria2 or transmission-cli. The latest version of KMS nano comes in the .zip file called LaNano11.2.zip. Its torrent is available here.

Once you downloaded LaNano11.2.zip, extract and run KMSnano.exe. Remember to disable any antivirus program first. The program will silently start up a QEMU virtual machine with the IP address 127.0.0.3 and run a KMS server inside the virtual machine. It will also try to activate Windows 7, Windows 8, Office 2010 or Office 2012 if any of them is installed on the host computer. In most cases, the program will successfully activate your copy of Windows or Office and quit silently. If you want to monitor KMSnano or check whether it finished or not, press Ctl+Alt+Del at the same time and then open the Task Manager. You'll see a process called qemu-system-i386 running on a huge memory if KMSnano is still running. On a system with a limited amount of memory (less than 1.5 GB), KMSnano may take a long time or even fail.

If KMSnano fails for some reason, you need to take extra steps and do some manual hacking. Use 7-zip to extract the contents of KMSnano into an empty folder, for example, KMSNANO. Then, open a Command Prompt with the Administrator privilege, go to the KMSNANO folder, and type Manual.cmd. KMSELDI will pop up showing the IP address to use (127.0.0.3) and show you a black window in which you see Windows starting. While the virtual machine is running, open another Command Prompt with the administrator privilege. Type the following commands to activate your product.

cscript ospp.vbs /inpkey:xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
cscript ospp.vbs /sethst:127.0.0.3
cscript ospp.vbs /act

The ospp.vbs script for Office 2013 can be typically located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15. The keys to type with the inpkey option can be found on this page. Once activation succeeds, the QEMU virtual machine will quit by itself. To check whether your copy of Windows or Office has been activated, you can run the Check_Activation.cmd script inside the KMSNANO folder.

Also Read

• Download Microsoft Office 2013
• Microsoft Technet: Use tools to configure client computers in Office 2013
• Microsoft Technet: Volume activation methods in Office 2013
• Activate Windows 7, Windows 8, Office 2010 and Office 2013 with KMS Nano

OEM SLIC tables for Windows Vista

I was researching the activation scheme behind Windows Vista OEM computers. Computers with pre-installed Windows Vista have a special license embedded in their ACPI BIOS, called SLIC table. This kind of a hardware-based activation scheme was designed to prevent software piracy. Nonetheless, there's a way to create a SLIC table in the BIOS with the help of software. This method is sometimes called SoftMod or just Vista Loader.

Using the SoftMod method, one can insert the SLIC signature of a certain hardware manufacturer into the BIOS and apply a copy of a license file (*.xrm-ms), then have Windows Vista activated. The first SLIC code that was leaked widely belongs to the (infamous) ASUS notebook manufacturer. After ASUS, more and more SLIC codes have been discovered and exploited.

Obviously, using a SLIC code that's spread and used widely makes it vulnerable to Windows updates that are designed to defeat circumventive measures against software activation. Therefore, uncommon SLIC signatures are better than the common ones. Vista Loader 3.0.0.1 includes OEM BIOS emulation codes of the following vendors:

• AMD
  
• AMD64
  
• Acer
  
• Asus
  
• COMPAQ
  
• Dell
  
• Emachines
  
• Fujitsu-Siemens
  
• Gateway
  
• Hewlett-Packard
  
• Intel
  
• Levono
  
• Medion
  
• NEC
  
• Packard Bell
  
• Samsung
  
• Sony
  
• Toshiba
  

Among these vendors, MEDION seems to be the most obscure one. Anyway, I found more vendor SLIC codes by downloading AMI_SLIC3_20080419.rar.