Activate The System (slmgr -ato)
KMS clients will automatically attempt to contact the KMS server every two hours to activate.
You can force a client to activate the following slmgr.vbs switch.
slmgr.vbs -ato
Windows 10
Windows 10 has the KMS key built in.
Use step 1 (to set the KMS server to kms.csx.private.cam.ac.uk)
\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -skms kms.csx.private.cam.ac.uk
and step 3 (activating the product using -ato)
slmgr.vbs -ato
Checking The License Status
Viewing the system properties should tell you if the system is activated or not. You can also use slmgr -dlv to view detailed licensing status of a system.
Converting clients from MAK to KMS licensing/Issues with KMS
You need to tell Windows that it is going to activate using KMS rather than MAK. When you buy a copy of Windows from software sales you will get a MAK key as part of the paperwork, this is not the one to use. Every Vista and Server 2008 (non R2) volume license media has a pid.txt file found under \Sources. This contains the KMS key. Alternative KMS keys can be found in the Volume Activation Technical Reference, for links look at the end of the page.
Troubleshooting
For Server 2008 when using the pid key from the \Sources\pid.txt file you may see the following error after adding the key with -ipk
- Run Slui.exe 0x2a 0xC004F015 to display error text
- Error 0xC004F015
This error can be ignored. Run Slmgr -ato and the system should activate.
When using the commands above, you may get errors such as '0x800706BA The RPC server is unavailable' (which may indicate a network error but is often displayed as an unhelpful generic error message) or 'Error 0x800706BA occurred in connecting to server -ipk'. The following three points should be noted:
- Check that you are logged in as an Administrator running an Administrative command prompt
- In the cscript command itself try using a / instead of -
- If the error is with the -skms command it may indicate a network error (failure to communicate on port TCP 1688 - due to this you cannot activate via Lapwing and may get error 0x4004F00C)
For a more detailed list of error codes and possible causes see Microsoft's How to troubleshoot Volume Activation error codes on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista-based computers at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938450.
Microsoft Documentation
Full Microsoft documentation can be found at the Microsoft Technet site. Some Selected links can be found below.
Root page for Volume activation
Volume Activation Technical Reference
Volume Activation 2.0 Technical Guidance documentation download








0 comments: