What’s the purpose of this release?
Bypassing the product activation requirement of Microsoft Windows Vista x86.
How does it work?
Microsoft allows large hardware manufacturers (e.g. ASUS, HP, Dell) to ship their products
containing a Windows Vista installation that does NOT require any kind of product activation as this might be considered an unnecessary inconvenience for the end-user.
Instead these so-called ‘Royalty OEMs’ are granted the right to embed certain license information into their hardware products, which can be validated by Windows Vista to make obtaining further activation information (online or by phone) obsolete.
This mechanism is commonly referred to as ‘SLP 2.0′ (‘system-locked pre-installation 2.0′) and consists of the following three key elements: