How to Use Windows 8 Developer Preview for One More Year?

Windows 8 Developer Preview (Build 8102) is the pre-release version of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. Since Microsoft released it to the web, Microsoft set the expire date to March 11 2012, so people can only use it for a couple months.

But in the other side, we can see that developers and consumers still want to stick with Windows 8 Developer Preview for a long time. If you are categorized in that type of user, don't worry because Microsoft has released an update that will extend the expiry date of Windows 8 Developer Preview from March 11 2012 to January 16 2013!

But before talking about how to get the update, let's take a quick look of what will happen if Windows 8 Developer Preview expires.

You'll receive following message on the Activate Windows screen in Control Panel:

The license for this pre-released version of Windows has expired. You'll need to enter a new product key to activate Windows. Until you activate, Windows will restart every 1 hour, so you should back up your data.

Install the latest version of Windows.

 
You will receive the following message in the Windows Activation screen:

This pre-release version of Windows has expired. Your computer will restart every 2 hours and you might lose any unsaved data.

You will receive this message in the Personalize pane in Control Panel

You need to Activate Windows before you can personalize your PC.

So, if you want to use Windows 8 Developer Preview for one more year, you can download and install the new update KB2671501 from Windows Update.