Microsoft provides free trial versions of its products, including Windows Server operating systems, so that they can be tried in business, school or even in a lab.

Following initial installation, the license is active for 180 days. Afterwards, the system still works but there is an automatic shutdown after an hour of use, which is annoying…. Of course in business, you must purchase a perpetual license from Microsoft. But to do a lab it remains restrictive.

Start by entering the command below to view the activation status:
slmgr -dlv

We can see that the “Notification reason” property indicates that the 180-day grace period has ended…. You should know that the evaluation license can be renewed 6 times, as indicated by the “Remaining Windows rearm” property. count”: with 180 days each time, this offers 3 years of licenses. Pretty cool for doing a lab?

To renew the evaluation period and start again for 180 days, we will use the following command:
slmgr -rearm

If you are in a PowerShell console, you can restart the server directly via this command:
Restart-Computer

When the server has restarted, open a PowerShell console again. This time, we will activate the active license information via the -dli option, which gives:
slmgr -dli

The “Time remaining” value then indicates how long your evaluation license is still valid! ? When necessary, repeat this operation.