Windows10 Licencing

Licencing is a headache, if you don't do it, even if you paid for licence, you can not use a product. This short article touches the surface of licencing in Windows 10.

View Installed Licence

Yes, to use Windows 10, we need a valid licence. Windows stores this licence somewhere in your system, so that, it normally automatically activates your system and you do not need licence again. Sometimes, this is not enough because we need to manually activate the system and in this situation, we need the actual licence.

Windows hides the licence from viewing(only last 5 letters are shown), that means we need to get the script which shows the installed licence in the system.

I got a working Visual Basic Script which shows the installed licence in the system.

File: GetProductKey.vbs
(script source: https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/view-your-product-key-windows-10-8-7-script/)

Option Explicit  
 
Dim objshell,path,DigitalID, Result  
Set objshell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") 
'Set registry key path 
Path = "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\" 
'Registry key value 
DigitalID = objshell.RegRead(Path & "DigitalProductId") 
Dim ProductName,ProductID,ProductKey,ProductData 
'Get ProductName, ProductID, ProductKey 
ProductName = "Product Name: " & objshell.RegRead(Path & "ProductName") 
ProductID = "Product ID: " & objshell.RegRead(Path & "ProductID") 
ProductKey = "Installed Key: " & ConvertToKey(DigitalID)  
ProductData = ProductName  & vbNewLine & ProductID  & vbNewLine & ProductKey 
'Show messbox if save to a file  
If vbYes = MsgBox(ProductData  & vblf & vblf & "Save to a file?", vbYesNo + vbQuestion, "BackUp Windows Key Information") then 
   Save ProductData  
End If 
 
 
 
'Convert binary to chars 
Function ConvertToKey(Key) 
    Const KeyOffset = 52 
    Dim isWin8, Maps, i, j, Current, KeyOutput, Last, keypart1, insert 
    'Check if OS is Windows 8 
    isWin8 = (Key(66) \ 6) And 1 
    Key(66) = (Key(66) And &HF7) Or ((isWin8 And 2) * 4) 
    i = 24 
    Maps = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789" 
    Do 
           Current= 0 
        j = 14 
        Do 
           Current = Current* 256 
           Current = Key(j + KeyOffset) + Current 
           Key(j + KeyOffset) = (Current \ 24) 
           Current=Current Mod 24 
            j = j -1 
        Loop While j >= 0 
        i = i -1 
        KeyOutput = Mid(Maps,Current+ 1, 1) & KeyOutput 
        Last = Current 
    Loop While i >= 0  
     
    If (isWin8 = 1) Then 
        keypart1 = Mid(KeyOutput, 2, Last) 
        insert = "N" 
        KeyOutput = Replace(KeyOutput, keypart1, keypart1 & insert, 2, 1, 0) 
        If Last = 0 Then KeyOutput = insert & KeyOutput 
    End If     
     
 
    ConvertToKey = Mid(KeyOutput, 1, 5) & "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 6, 5) & "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 11, 5) & "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 16, 5) & "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 21, 5) 
    
     
End Function 
'Save data to a file 
Function Save(Data) 
    Dim fso, fName, txt,objshell,UserName 
    Set objshell = CreateObject("wscript.shell") 
    'Get current user name  
    UserName = objshell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%UserName%")  
    'Create a text file on desktop  
    fName = "C:\Users\" & UserName & "\Desktop\WindowsKeyInfo.txt" 
    Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 
    Set txt = fso.CreateTextFile(fName) 
    txt.Writeline Data 
    txt.Close 
End Function

After saving this content into the file, we can execute the file which shows the installed licence.

 How to Activate Licence (slmgr)

Windows has given us a very useful tool called slmgr.vbs which is used to view licence information and many other licence related operations.

Please have a look at this article for detailed information regarding slmgr tool:

https://www.howtogeek.com/245445/how-to-use-slmgr-to-change-remove-or-extend-your-windows-license/

I have listed some useful commands using slmgr.vbs tool.

a) slmgr.vbs /dli (Display licence information)
b) slmgr.vbs /dlv (Detail licence view)
c) slmgr.vbs /xpr (Expiration date)
d) slmgr.vbs /upk (Uninstall product key) => Restart required.
e) slmgr.vbs /cpky (Clear product key from registry only)
f) slmgr.vbs /ipk ####-####-####-####-#### (Install product key)
g) slmgr.vbs /ato (Activate online)
h) slmgr.vbs /dti (Displays confirmation Id) => this id should be given to support for offline activation, then support gives your activation_id.
g) slmgr.vbs /atp activation_id (Activate with id)

Basic Git commands

1. Cloning a git branch

git clone -b solution https://github.com/SNCodingChallenge/stm_challenge_krishna_paudel.git

2. Change push repository

   First clone the git project into your local:
   git clone git@kpaudel.com.np:/opt/git/MyProject.git
 
 Go into MyProject folder and hen remove the .git folder which clears out all the old information. Run the command:

git init 

Which regenerates git information. Now we add remote repository to push:

  git remote add git@mysansar.com:/repos/git/MyNewProject.git 

Now verify:

  git remote -v 


3. Create a new repository in the server

 Create a folder MyNewProject.git into Server repository.
 Go into the directory and execute

   git init --bare

Give access rights to the git user. (Normally we set the owner of the directory as git)

4. Push to the remote repository

git push origin master

5.Commit changes to the local repository

git commit -m "Message" .

6.Merge updates from a branch

git pull [origin branch]

Example:
a) Merging from the same branch
git pull

b) Merging from master branch
git pull origin master

Note: If sometimes, the pull merging gives the following failure:
"refusing to merge unrelated histories"
Then the following command will be useful.

git pull origin master --allow-unrelated-histories

7. Disable http ssl verification

We need this when we create a certificate by ourselves for our private purpose. In that situation, we have to disable SSL verification or simply use ssh. 


git config --global http.sslverify "false"

8. Store GIT credentials

Sometimes we need this feature if you are tired of providing the username and password while executing the git command. The solution for this is to store credentials,

git config --global credential.helper store

It stores the credential and you never need to provide the username and password.

There are some options too:

git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=600'

git config --global credential.helper cache

10. Display the branch name in the terminal

If we display the branch name in the terminal, it helps us to know which branch we are working on and also prevents mistakenly working on other unintended branches.

I found the script to run to activate this feature in the terminal. 

# Show git branch name
force_color_prompt=yes
color_prompt=yes
parse_git_branch() {
 git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/(\1)/'
}
if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
 PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[01;31m\]$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else
 PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w$(parse_git_branch)\$ '
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt

Just save this file in "git-branch-name.sh" in your preferred location and run this at the time the system starts.

To run this script while the system loads, we need to append the following lines in the .bashrc file. 

...

# To display git branch name in the terminal

if [ -f /Backup/scripts/git-branch-name.sh ]; then

   . /Backup/scripts/git-branch-name.sh 

fi 

...