How long Windows 8 Consumer Preview will be valid?

[tHeDa!]

Most of you know that windows 8 Consumer Preview has recently released. Before this there was a Developer preview and it didn’t remain for long days. Now the time of consume preview. I don’t know how long it will last. Does anyone know how many days it will valid? What is the expiry date of this version?

[Agavoli]

As far as I know that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview will last until January 15th, 2013. If you want to check the expiration date in your case, do the following:

• Hold down the Windows key and press R
• Type: winver
• Press Enter

Right now there is no complete version of Windows 8 and release date has not been declared yet. Don’t worry about upgrading to latest version if you are running Windows 8 Consumer preview. You can easily install either newer version or older version later. There is no final RTM version of Windows 8 yet. If on released, you cannot directly upgrade to that version. You need to do a custom installation.

[Jessalyn]

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview contains an expiration date as expected. The pre-release version can be used up to 16 January 2013. What happens next is not known yet - presumably the system will shut down after a certain time automatically once this deadline has passed. An indication on the release date of the final version is only partially - the pre-release version of Windows 7 at the time was half a year about the release date also available - that reaches Windows 8, but in the summer of RTM status, seems unlikely from today's perspective.

[Sitia]

You might be expecting that the Microsoft has released final RTM version officially but not yet. So give it a RC is in the course of development but there is still no information. So looking at the expiry date I can now only assume that the Final RTM version only available after the expiration of Windows 8 Consumer Preview. But don’t have any confirmation about it.

[Iquau]

Few days ago the Microsoft has released an update to Windows 8 Developer Preview and Windows Server 8 Developer Preview in order to extend the expiration date. Currently, the deadline for the Windows 8 Developer preview has ended on March 11, 2012 and Windows Server 8 Developer Preview soon going to expire on April 8, 2012. One thing make in mind that you must install this update before the expiration date for purpose of extending the expiry date. After installing the update, reboot the system which will automatically activate Windows 8 again. You can also update using Windows Update I think. Simply launch Windows Update and then install KB2671501 which will extend the expiration date.