1709 Product Activation issue

[Badaz52]

Hi,

 

We are currently building a test image for 1709, all is going well and it has sysprepped without issue. Overall it wasn't too much of a headache until now.

 

We activate Windows 10 over our network and it is working perfectly on 1607. After sysprep our 1709 clients do not activate at all, office does so there are no problems there but I don't know why Windows isn't activating, nothing else has changed.

 

When I sysprepped I did OOBE Generalise as I have always done.

 

If I try and activate manually I get this message:

 

We can't activate windows on this device because you don't have a valid digital license or product key. If you think you do have a valid license or key, select Troubleshoot below. Error code: 0xC004F012.

 

I installed 1709 fresh Education downloading the ISO from the MVLS website so it isn't OEM.

 

Anyone know what could have happened?

 

Could it be my unattend file?

Edited December 1, 2017 by Badaz52

[sted]

what pc do you have it installed on it sounds to me like it dosent have a slic code in the bios and for that particular machine you may need to use a mak code

[Badaz52]

what pc do you have it installed on it sounds to me like it dosent have a slic code in the bios and for that particular machine you may need to use a mak code

 

I've built the image on a vmware client.

[sted]

I've built the image on a vmware client.

 

theres your problem it wont have a windows key in its bios so kms wont work as its only technically an upgrade license and with no key in the bios it has nothing to upgrade from

[Badaz52]

Is that a new thing then as on 1607 it doesn't have that affect? if I deployed my image onto a regular computer it will activate then?

[sted]

Is that a new thing then as on 1607 it doesn't have that affect? if I deployed my image onto a regular computer it will activate then?

afaik its always done the same it should be fine on a real pc

[Badaz52]

afaik its always done the same it should be fine on a real pc

 

I can confirm that this isn't the case unless MS changed something in 1703. If I load our 1607 image onto the virtual machine it activates with our internal server. If I load our 1709 image it doesn't activate at all nor does it activate on a physical machine. Both are using the same unattend.xml which does not contain a product key, not sure if it needs to?

[sted]

I can confirm that this isn't the case unless MS changed something in 1703. If I load our 1607 image onto the virtual machine it activates with our internal server. If I load our 1709 image it doesn't activate at all nor does it activate on a physical machine. Both are using the same unattend.xml which does not contain a product key, not sure if it needs to?

 

might be worth putting in the generic win 10 kms key in ive sometimes needed to do that

[Badaz52]

might be worth putting in the generic win 10 kms key in ive sometimes needed to do that

 

Its working now, so we don't specify a product key at all in our unattend.xml file but you have to create a new unattend file for each new build of Windows 10. Our 1607 unattend worked OK you see for all the other settings it was just the activation issue, turns out just re-creating it in the Windows Kit for 1709 with exactly the same settings did the trick

[KK20]

theres your problem it wont have a windows key in its bios so kms wont work as its only technically an upgrade license and with no key in the bios it has nothing to upgrade from

This cannot be true as we have many machines that have no SLIC (they have retail box windows 8 stickers on the machines- the physical windows 8 key has never been used as the sticker is there for audit purposes). We use KMS to activate these machines just fine with W10 edu (EES upgrade). I suspect you haven't updated your KMS client key. you can run an slmgr.vbs /ipk script on your clients if you wish, the KMS client key isn't a secret and you can WMI filter your versions too so you wont kill the wrong key.

[Badaz52]

This cannot be true as we have many machines that have no SLIC (they have retail box windows 8 stickers on the machines- the physical windows 8 key has never been used as the sticker is there for audit purposes). We use KMS to activate these machines just fine with W10 edu (EES upgrade). I suspect you haven't updated your KMS client key. you can run an slmgr.vbs /ipk script on your clients if you wish, the KMS client key isn't a secret and you can WMI filter your versions too so you wont kill the wrong key.

 

I just rebuilt the unattend.xml using the 1709 kit, we never include a key either through activating our image manually or by specifying one in our unattend file. Just re-doing the unattend.xml did the job.