Try setting the date through an OS of your choice, instead of through BIOS.

frudi wrote:

Try setting the date through an OS of your choice, instead of through BIOS.

I tried this in Windows XP, set the year to 2002, but after reboot it changed to 2004. The date must be set before OS installation, otherwise it will fail due to testing digital signature expires.

Dos boot disk/USB?
I'm not sure about Vista, but Shift F10 in windows 7 setup drops you to a command prompt, say at the partition screen, if that works you could run the time command before setup starts installing?

chinny22 wrote:

Dos boot disk/USB?
I'm not sure about Vista, but Shift F10 in windows 7 setup drops you to a command prompt, say at the partition screen, if that works you could run the time command before setup starts installing?

Very early versions of Vista still use XP-style text-based installer and verify digital signature after first reboot. They're not like later Vista or 7 employing RE to run installer. I'm thinking about modifying BIOS to get early years but have no idea about how to do it.

I'm guessing you are trying to install some beta version of Vista that has a hard coded expiration date?

cyclone3d wrote:

I'm guessing you are trying to install some beta version of Vista that has a hard coded expiration date?

Yes. But with post-2004 ones, the expiration date can be removed in some way. For most pre-2004 ones you can't, and the only way to get them installed is to set date back to 2003 or even 2002 depends on which version you want.

What about hacking the boot sector to change the year in the CMOS before loading the OS?

It's probably much easier to just hack the BIOS.

Hacking the BIOS itself should be the easiest way though... Then how can I do it? I don't have much experience modifying BIOS.