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%SystemRoot% is a system wide variable which refers to the path and folder name where system files are located. Typically this is C:\Windows, although you can designate a different drive or folder when windows is installed. you can use %SystemRoot% to replace the actual location of the folder that contains the windows system files.

To identify your systemroot folder, click Start –> Run, type %SystemRoot% and click OK. This will open windows explorer with your system root folder displayed.

Confusingly if you go Start –> Control Panel –> System –> Advanced tab –> Environment Variables, scroll to the bottom of the list and double click windir you will see that %SystemRoot% is a “Variable value” of a variable named windir.

1. Run regedit and drill down to:
HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Current Version\WPAEvents. Select WPAEvents then on the right double click “oobetimer” and change at least one digit of this value to deactivate windows.

2. Choose run from start menu and type this command in the run box:
%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a to get the Activate Windows wizard, select “Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows”, click next.

3. In the next screen click the “Change Product Key” button.

4. In the next screen enter your new product key, then click the update button.

5. Close the wizard, reboot and enter the command in step 2 to verify windows is activated and you should see “windows is already activated”.