Windows 7 showing as unactivated

[IT_Man_Dan]

Morning all I wonder if anyone has experienced this and solved it?

 

We have Win 7 here across the network and used to activate via KMS but this never worked 100% and would throw up 'Not genuine' messages etc so we then swapped to activating using the MAC key which appeared to work.

 

I've just been informed that some computers that had been imaged and activated about 1 month ago are now showing as needing activation again?!? This is very frustrating and to be honest a bit embarassing as people question the fact that it says windows is not genuine...

 

Can anyone advise please?

 

Many thanks

[sparkeh]

I would get hold of VAMT and check the status of these machines and activate if necessary.

[JATSO]

Hi,

 

Did you sysprep the machines after you had imaged them? missing out sysprep after imaging will cause the activation problems, KMS works as long as the machine can see your DNS server and the KMS Host. The most annoying thing about KMS is the windows firewall and that the local administator account is enabled with that same password that is used as the domain password.

 

Configure those and it works as long as you have reached the 25 Client limit then all clients should activate via the kms host.

 

Have you used the VAMT tool.? it helps.

 

Jatso

 

 

Morning all I wonder if anyone has experienced this and solved it?

 

We have Win 7 here across the network and used to activate via KMS but this never worked 100% and would throw up 'Not genuine' messages etc so we then swapped to activating using the MAC key which appeared to work.

 

I've just been informed that some computers that had been imaged and activated about 1 month ago are now showing as needing activation again?!? This is very frustrating and to be honest a bit embarassing as people question the fact that it says windows is not genuine...

 

Can anyone advise please?

 

Many thanks

[IT_Man_Dan]

Regarding the VAMT tool, I hadn't used this but I have just downloaded and installed it but it shows all computers apart from the one I'm on as 'Unable to connect to the WMI service on the remote machine' therefore licence ifo is 'unknown.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

[LeMarchand]

I have vague memories of a similar problem at one of my schools. IIRC the firewall wasn't allowing the WMI service to connect and I had to create a GPO to tell it to do so.

[chazzy2501]

I've seen this with MAK activated machines. It used to be that helpful users wouldn't shutdown their PCs properly, windows would open up in repair mode and the user would roll the machine back.

 

Have you checked to see if office is also still activated? (assuming office2010)

[TechSupp]

Had this as well, just had a pc this week do it, thats since last summer when we changed to w7 and the image was syspreped.

[IT_Man_Dan]

Office 2010 is also showing as not being activated on the effected pc's also :-/

[witch]

Happen here every few weeks - either Windows 7 or Office 2010 report that they are not activated. Sometimes just clicking activation works, sometimes you have to enter the product key.

Activation is done manually after imaging (and syspreping) Never worked out what is going on.

[Duke5A]

Could be a couple of things...

 

- Do you deploy software that was packaged by hand? I've created packages using the snapshot method and the reference machine I was using decided to check in with the KMS server in between the before and after snapshots. I didn't realize this until I deployed the package to a dozen computers or so. They were all coming back with licensing errors after reboot. It worked itself out eventually, but I did have to recreate the package. (Note to self, use MAK keys on reference computers for building packages).

 

- Do you using software similar to Deep Freeze? The systems have to be scheduled to thaw periodically or every time they boot Windows will believe it hasn't checked in with a KMS server since it's initial call in.

 

- The Deep Freeze software will also affect MS Office, even if you have a maintenance schedule to thaw the machines at night. Office doesn't attempt to activate until it's opened. You can force it to check in via command line if need be.

 

Outside of that, I've never really seen any issues with KMS licensing.