Microsoft has confirmed the existence of the 'timer crack' or '2099 crack' since the early days of January 2007, long before Windows Vista had been made available for the general public. Alex Kochis, a senior licensing manager on the Windows Genuine Advantage team promised that Microsoft would address the new illegal method to activate Windows Vista "soon." Six months later "soon" is still not soon enough for Microsoft and a weblog which normally posts the very latest in Vista hacking techniques is now doing Microsoft a service and revealed a tutorial describing how to uninstall the TimerStop.sys Vista crack installed via the TimerLock installer.

Unfortunately, because the website in question offers not only the 2009 crack uninstallation process but also the actual crack itself I will not be able to deliver you with a link or even to credit the blog in question. Still, the said site does present what it claims to be an uninstall method for the 2009 Vista activation workaround. Uninstalling a Vista crack is a freak event to me. Much in the same manner as the Vista crack author which subsequently apologized to Microsoft for his creation. But then again, who am I to argue a good deed?

Since Microsoft became aware of the initial 2099 Vista crack, originally a manual process 23 steps long involving a kernel level hack and complex registry alterations, TimerLock emerged, as a completely automated installer for the delivery and implementation of the activation workaround. Essentially, the crack is designed to extent the grace period of a Windows Vista copy that is not activated until 2099. The crack was reported to work both on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Vista.

When removing the crack from a Vista operating system all you have to keep in mind is the fact that TimerLock deploys the TimerStop.sys or TimerStop64.sys driver. Still, this driver is installed with a random name, in order to make Microsoft detection less of a threat. Running TimerLock on a Vista copy will reveal the name of the driver to the user, but the file can also be tracked down through the CurrentName.dat file located in the installation folder. You will then be able to locate the item in C:WindowsSystem32 (and C:WindowsSysWOW64 for 64-bit Vista) and delete it manually. Additionally you will have to remove any registry entries associated with the driver name in the following locations HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesDriverName
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001ServicesDriverName
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001ServicesDriverName.

Next you will have to enter "cmd" in the search boc under the Start menu and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter in order to launch the command prompt with elevated privileges. Here type "cd" followed by "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%MicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsStartup" and "del fixdate.cmd" pressing the Enter key after each one.