How to get Windows Vista out of reduced functionality mode
Many people find out how to delay Windows activation when it’s too late, leaving users in a helpless position since they are no longer allowed to access the command prompt. Not to mention names, but because a certain company made many mistakes (e.g: the extended slmgr tweak and many cracks that can be found online), you don’t have to ask yourself if you can get rid of reduced functionality mode - you can.
1) Open your Internet Explorer and type C:/
2) Doing this will cause your computer to run explorer.exe. Allow any UAC requests to open this process.
At this point, explorer.exe is ran and you are pretty much out of reduced functionality mode. However, I imagine that most people would then want to extend the activation period. I have provided the steps to do so below:
3) Once explorer.exe is started, click on the Address bar and type in:
%windir%\system32\
4) Look for cmd.exe. Right click it and choose Run as Administrator. Make sure you do this.
5) You may then reset the activation period to 30 days by inputting:
slmgr -rearm
6) For more info about extending activation, click here (Follow Steps 1-3 to reset the activation period to 30 days. However, this can only be done 3 times. If you want to do this for a year, Steps 4-7 will explain how.)
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April 7th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
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April 7th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Actually the path above should be %windir%\system32\ so that it works for people that may have Vista loaded on a different partition. And, then cscript slmgr.vbs -rearm is the needed command so that they don’t have to dig elsewhere. Also, if people would just download the free Volume License 2.0 whitepaper, there are clear directions to doing just this as well as steps to take when you build a Vista image that includes some automation around recovering from Reduced Functionality Mode (even by a Standard User rather than an admin).
April 7th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Thanks for the tip Glenn
April 10th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
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April 11th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Another way is to Open Internet Explorer and type “%comspec%” excluding the quotes. This will run Command Prompt
April 16th, 2007 at 5:35 am
How can I run Internet explorer if my default browser is Opera?
April 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Give credit where credit is due. Nearly the same article showed up on TweakVista.com (http://www.tweakvista.com/Article39153.aspx) three days before it appeared on this site. I wonder where you got it from?
April 17th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Jet: There are only so many ways to perform tweaks in Vista, and only so many tweaks. This is only pure coincidence. I’ve just skimmed over their guide and it involves different steps than the one here.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:29 am
What if the default browser is Firefox… there is no way to get to windows now… and you can’t change it back to Internet Explorer.
July 13th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Someone please help! im locked out using firefox :S how can one start te explorer.exe process from within firefox?
July 28th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
just select a random link and click save as. Then browse files, then right click a folder and click Explore
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I’m still in reduced funtionality mode despite doing this…
August 12th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
my vista is running slow
August 12th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
my vista is running slow n how do increase the virtual memory of the ram using the harddisk as part of the RAM
August 25th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Firefox: Download a zip file, then open it, explorer opens up…
August 28th, 2007 at 11:05 am
is there any way of tweaking vista to run without activation forever (or for more than a year). i have been reading bout the 360 days tweak, the problem is what next after 360days??.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:32 am
if you wanna run command prompt in administrator mode then just press the start button (windows) type in cmd then right click and “run as administrator”
much easier to do than messing about with IE
October 13th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
good look
October 26th, 2007 at 2:38 am
I can open the Explorer via the C:/ and I can find the cmd.exe but somehow Microsoft has altered my file association. Now when I double click a .exe file it opens Adobe Acrobat.
Part of this is my fault, as when I was first locked out with the Reduced Functionality trick Microsoft locked out any access to .exe files. When I originally tried to access an .exe file it brought up a large pop-up with various icons to associate with the .exe file. I inadvertently selected the adobe icon after about 5 attempts to circumvent the pop-up.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Hi. I did this and now my computer won’t even open Windows Vista with reduced functionality. It does not open at all. There is an error code that pops up. Code: 0xC004D302 that says that the security processor reported that the trusted data was rearmed.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:14 am
Did you run as administrator?
April 24th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Yes I ran it as asministrator it still dont work
July 27th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
what does it mean when i follow the above steps and get a pop up that said “Not enough quota to process this command”?
November 1st, 2008 at 9:27 pm
If you have a different browser locate the Internet Explorer folder in Program Files and run the iexplorer.exe and it will work. Then follow the steps
http://www.conradgorny.com