Windows 7 Activation Through Central Deployment

[Jamo]

We are looking at central deployment of W7. Have come across a slight issue with the volume licencing available to schools currently. We have W7 pro on our stations and MDT as the deployment service.

 

I have heard about the KMS system and it sounds great, but how do you get the KMS system working without an OVS or School agreement? We have paid for our Windows licences so without putting the individual keys into the stations to activate them how do we go about centrally deploying and activating! The MS site is SO difficult to decipher and get information from, the licencing programs are all crazy and it seems strange that we would have to go for a subscription licence model and pay for the Windows licences effectively again just to activate!!

 

Help!

 

[sted]

depends what type of key you have is your windows 7 key a mak key or a kms key

 

if its a mak key i THINK you can manage it through vamt (part of the waik kit) if not each machine may need individually activating

 

if its kms from what i remember (ive only done office 2010 via kms and im not 100% sure its worked as the pc says activated but kms seems to show it in grace period) you pretty much never give the pc a code and slmgr on the server takes care of it (obviously needs some setup but not much best to look on here or google specifics)

[Jamo]

The keys are OEM's atm just bought through the manufacturer (we have XP on them atm just looking at upgrading).

 

How do we get the MAK or KMS keys? I'm guessing they come with the programs which would mean purchasing everything again!!

[strawberry]

Vamt will deploy and register the keys, with or without kms as you can choose where you register the keys ( online or kms) but i'm afriad there's no shortcut to just typing in the individual keys!

[sted]

if they are oem keys then you have to activate them manually and quite often over the phone as they are designed for single users home pcs really. To get a kms/mak you would need some form of volume license agreement like ees

 

On the plus side oem/vlk disks dont exist anymore (apart from enterprise being its own disk) so volume codes work with retail disks and vice versa so you existing wds stuff should work if you alter/add a ssyprep file with an appropriate key

[Jamo]

So VAMT allows activation of OEM licences you just have to type the codes? We have 710 stations here

 

So MS basically make you purchase you licences twice once OEM and then another time for the volume activation? Bit harsh one would think really!!