The Timer Stopper Crack is one of the Windows Vista activation workarounds that has been made available in the wild. It involves setting the BIOS clock to the year 2099 and using a patch to crack Vista's activation mechanism. The Timer Stopper workaround is designed to crack the activation process on a fresh install of Vista and on an operating system that has already been installed.

"Recently it has been reported that activation of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system has been compromised," a Microsoft representative revealed to Microsoft Watch. "Microsoft is investigating this reported activation breach; however, there is no concrete evidence that this breach has been automated to the point that it is widely deployable."

The hack is not without limitations. According to the reports, although the Timer Stopper workaround works on 32-bit editions of Vista, it fails to be a valid workaround for 64-bit versions. But I must dispute Microsoft's position that this breach is not widely deployed. In fact, I have come across five websites that permitted the download of the Timer Stopper patch on a superficial, and I must emphasize, superficial search.

In all fairness, I must report that three of the websites have discontinued the downloads and were presenting the following messages: "This file was reported as illegal material. Access to the file is temporary blocked," "Invalid link - The file was deleted because of violating our Terms of service" and "The file has been deleted. Reason: THIS FILE IS FORBIDDEN TO BE SHARED! Complaints received."

But, on another website, the patch was available for download with no problems. "You have requested the file: New_Vista_RTM_patch.rar | 4.41 KB | Downloaded 9819 times." Downloaded 9,819 times. How's that for not widely available? (The name presented above is not the actual name of the file. The actual name has been modified in order to help with reducing its usage. We, here at Softpedia, do not promote any type of action or content associated with piracy)

"Microsoft will take action against known hacks and workarounds and will utilize the Software Protection Platform technologies in Windows Vista in order to protect consumers from being defrauded by counterfeit versions and putting their systems at risk," added the Microsoft representative for Microsoft Watch.