It's just been brought to our attention that Brian Livingston of WindowsSecrets.com will post up a report on thursday in relation to the SkipRearm function in Windows Vista (supposedly allowing one to bypass Vista's activation mechanism).

He has discovered that all copies of Vista to have reached store shelves during March have been modified in such a way that this hack simply no longer works.

Read below for the full scoop :-

This Thursday, April 5, editorial director Brian Livingston of WindowsSecrets.com will report that Microsoft has apparently disabled the SkipRearm function in copies of Windows Vista that reached store shelves in March 2007. His tests on copies of Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate confirm tthe original behavior in copies obtained in January and February, but show that it doesn't work in newer copies purchased in the latter half of March. According to Brian, the behavior of SkipRearm allowed such a big change in the product activation regime of Vista that it's completely logical that Microsoft would remove it sooner or later.

As one of the writers who originally took an interest in the story, we wanted to inform you of a possible reason why some bloggers can't reproduce the trick in their own copies of Vista.