Recovering Windows Activation Keys
KB ID 0001115 “Have you got one of those programs that gets the Windows key?”, My colleague asked me the other week. I said “Just download a key finder application?”, “Yeah I’ve tried that and is showing the code as all B’s”. You may also just see ‘Product key was not found’ on some software. I sent him some more links and got back to what I was doing. He was having no joy...
Windows XP – Sysprep (for imaging)
KB ID 0000599 Problem A client who we recently did a WDS (Windows 7) install for, needed to image a couple of Windows XP machines, (They had some software that either would not run, or was not supported on Windows 7). They asked me for some documentation on how to do this, it’s been such a long time since I imaged any XP machine, so I took the opportunity to document it properly. Solution Before you begin, be aware you need to...
Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 – Activation Error 0xC004F074
KB ID 0000766 Problem I jumped on a clients remote desktop services server today and saw; However when I went to activate; Windows couldn’t be activated Error Code: 0xC004F074 Error Description:the Software Licensing Service reported that the product could not be activated. No Key Management Service (KMS) could be contacted. Please see the Application Event Log for additional information. Solution Out of the box this version of...
Windows – Changing the Unlock Code and Activating
KB ID 0000667 Problem Some versions of Windows 8 (Windows 8 Pro for example) ask for the unlock code as soon as you install them, I installed Windows 8 Enterprise on my PC at home today, and I couldn’t even change my user photo, because Windows hadn’t activated. When I tried, this is what happened. Solution As I had not yet installed a Windows unlock code, it’s safe to assume it had it’s in built KMS code, so...
Deploying Office 2010 via Group Policy
KB ID 0000464 Problem What used to be the simplest task, has now been overly complicated (Thanks Microsoft!) Simply deploying from a single .msi file would have been far too easy! This procedure uses group policy to install Microsoft Office 2010 via group policy. It uses the Microsoft preferred method of employing startup scripts. Below I’ve also disabled UAC, I found it was stopping my automated install, (If I ran the script...