UPDATE: 9/2/2009 – I've re-blogged on this since Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7 have RTM'd – the information below is helpful for overview/to get started, and the new up to date info is here.
So, last week I was successful in getting KMS Activated on our network. Some of my partners in crime have been badgering me to start blogging (you know who you are) so I figured – okay. I'll try it.
For those of you that have sitting in a cave with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears – Microsoft changed the way they handle volume licensing / activation with the Vista/Server 2008 product lines. Many useful articles and blogs exist explaining this – but this page is a good place to start.
Some additional documentation that has more in depth technical details can be found here.
Yes, I read through all that rocket-science mumbo jumbo and was very impressed by all the big words. However, I was looking for the basics. I wanted to a) get a KMS key, b) install it and c) start activating machines against it. Where was the silver bullet?
Three places I frequent are My Digital Life, 4Sysops, and Petri. Each of them have had great articles. I grabbed bits and pieces from each and compiled my experience here.
To start, you need to get your KMS Key. When you buy your microsoft licensing, you'll receive your Authoritzation # and your Licenes # and you can enter those inside the Microsoft eOpen website. Enter that agreeement in eOpen, accept it, and then go grab you KMS key from your list of volume keys.
In my case, I wanted to use a Server 2003 product as my KMS Server. If you use Server 2003, you'll need to download the Key Management Service Package for your x86 or x64 version of Server 2003 SP1 and later.
- Download the KMS Package
- Extract it and install it through the easy GUI
- Run the following script to install the key
- cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -ipk KMSKEY
- Run the following script to activate the KMS host
- cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -ato
- You can confirm your KMS license state by running
- cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -dli
Okay, now you have a KMS Server. Great. Now what?
On your Vista / Server 2008 client, you just need to run a few scripts to activate those clients against your freshly built KMS Server. Open a command prompt with elevated (administrator) privileges.
- Run the following script to tell the client which KMS Server to use
- cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -skms kmsserver.domain.com
- (kmsserver.domain.com is the FQDN of your KMS Server)
- After telling your client which KMS to use, now you can activate it with this script
- cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -ato
What? You got an error? Really? Did you get the 0xC004F038 "The Computer could not be activated. The return count from your Key Management Service is insufficient" error? Great! That means things are working. You activated your KMS and your client can now activate against it. But, you see, KMS will not actually activate your clients until one of the following happens
- You activate 5 Server 2008 clients
- You activate 25 Vista clients
But, once the magic # is hit, all of your clients that you activated against your KMS are magically activated without any further processing by you. Cool, huh?
Wait, that's not the error? Did you get the Error 0x800706BA occurred in connecting to server -skms. Error Description: The RPC server is unavailable. error? Yup, I saw that one too. This is caused by either a) an incorrect product key was entered or b) because you didn't use a product key (or the wrong key) when you installed Vista. To fix that, open a command prompt with elevated (administrative) privileges. Run the following script
- Vista Business – cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -ipk YFKBB-PQJJV-G996G-VWGXY-2V3X8
- Vista Enterprise – cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -ipk VKK3X-68KWM-X2YGT-QR4M6-4BWMV
- 2008 STD (no HV) – cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -ipk W7VD6-7JFBR-RX26B-YKQ3Y-6FFFJ
- 2008 ENT (no HV) – cscript c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs -ipk 39BXF-X8Q23-P2WWT-38T2F-G3FPG
- (All of these codes, and more, are in the Volume Activation 2.0 Deployment Guide)
Then after running that script, run the -skms and -ato scripts again as mentioned above.
Anyway, your mileage may vary. I tried to capture the basics of how I setup KMS here, and I hope it's useful for you. G'nite.