BoostinFD Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Sorry if this question has been posted before, but i've searched online and asked around, yet i can't get a definite answer on this. I have windows 2008 r2 Domain controler running as KMS for office 10 licensing. At first it took 5 pc's to require activation in order to activate... So i got 5 pc's as a test and they activated fine. That was 5 months ago. Past 2 weeks i installed 3 more as I'm still working on the image etc.... however, not it's waiting for 5 more pc's again. So my question is, does the KMS always need minimum of 5 before it can activate or should it use the old ones and remember that it had 5 etc? Thanks.
Edu-IT Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 KMS tracks current activation requests, rather than keeping track of how many it has activated in the past, so you will always need at least 5 machines. (I believe!)
BoostinFD Posted April 22, 2011 Author Posted April 22, 2011 Wow, what a design. What if after activating 50 of them... I get a new one, it'll just stay there with the red bar across saying Activation failed and wait until i have 5?
glennda Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Wow, what a design. What if after activating 50 of them... I get a new one, it'll just stay there with the red bar across saying Activation failed and wait until i have 5? yes - if the kms server has not been able to contact the machine for 180 days and live activated count drops below 5 it won't activate them! rather annoying isn't it! especially with laptops that havn't been in school for that amount of time. EDIT: i think its 180 days not sure.
BoostinFD Posted April 22, 2011 Author Posted April 22, 2011 I just got a count of 5... they all activated... so are you saying that the count will stay at 5 for as long as they are up and running? Then if they get turned off for 180 days it'll drop down to 0 and start over?
glennda Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 (edited) I just got a count of 5... they all activated... so are you saying that the count will stay at 5 for as long as they are up and running? Then if they get turned off for 180 days it'll drop down to 0 and start over? it shouldn't stay at 5 if you have more - are you using any sort of imaging software? Edited April 22, 2011 by glennda
Arthur Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 (edited) The KMS host is contacted automatically every seven days, but if the computers are switched off for 180 days they will become deactivated (this applies to Office and Windows). http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/08/24/volume-activation.aspx KMS activation is not perpetual, so computers are activated (i.e. in the licensed state) for 180 days. Within that time, the KMS client will need to contact the KMS host and re-activate. When it does, it gets another 180 days starting from the day of re-activation. KMS clients by default attempt re-activation every seven days without a notification shown to the user, so this reactivation will happen automatically behind the scenes without any distractions. No “activation count” is “used up” when KMS clients activate and re-activate. If Office has not been activated 30 days after installation, users will see a red bar... http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/12/18/volume-activation-tips-and-tricks.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/office2010/WindowsLiveWriter/VolumeActivationTipsandTricks_89BA/clip_image004_2.jpg Edited April 22, 2011 by Arthur
glennda Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 If you are using Imaging Software to deploy more then 5 you need to re-arm the office 2010 installation as otherwise it will have the same unique key and therefore your kms count will not increase Deploy volume activation of Office 2010
BoostinFD Posted April 22, 2011 Author Posted April 22, 2011 I created an image using our SCCM server software. It already did the sysprep /generalize and all that. The keys are different I'm sure. We haven't deployed all pc's yet, since we're still in the testing stages. I wanted to make sure it works before i actually deploy all of them. The KMS works since as soon as i got a count of 5 it activated... all these pc's that just activated will stay up... so in ideal world the count should not go down, correct? thanks a lot... this really hepled
glennda Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 I created an image using our SCCM server software. It already did the sysprep /generalize and all that. The keys are different I'm sure. We haven't deployed all pc's yet, since we're still in the testing stages. I wanted to make sure it works before i actually deploy all of them. Sysprep does not re-arm the office installation - i had this problem when i deployed 10 machines and kms would not get above 5 it just stayed at 1 - so just be wary incase of that.
BoostinFD Posted April 22, 2011 Author Posted April 22, 2011 Well i know the count goes up with every image i deployed... that wasn't an issue... i'm just not sure why the count went down after a while...
glennda Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Well i know the count goes up with every image i deployed... that wasn't an issue... i'm just not sure why the count went down after a while... that will be they have not be in contact for 180 days
jamesfed Posted April 30, 2011 Posted April 30, 2011 Your best bet for PCs that don't contact the KMS server reguarly is to instead use your MAK keys - that way they stay activated reguardless if they have contact to your network or not.
k-strider Posted May 12, 2011 Posted May 12, 2011 To rearm Office i just run this in my .cmd file that eventually runs sysprep just before i send it up to my fog server. cd "Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform" OSPPREARM.EXE
Edu-IT Posted July 14, 2011 Posted July 14, 2011 I'm getting a message saying KMS needs to be activated when I try to force activation. Is this normal because I only have 4 machines checking in at the moment, or is KMS not configured properly?
timbo343 Posted August 8, 2011 Posted August 8, 2011 What error are you getting? and what software are you trying to activate?
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now