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I've been on a bit of a roll this week and have deployed around 30 fresh installs of Windows Server 2008 R2 using our Datacentre license, inside a VMWare environment.

However, what I've gone and forgotten as part of the setup routine is to activate the servers.

The last thing I want is next month to find out that our clients can't log into our terminal servers because I've forgotten to activate them, or for them to see "You have been a victim of software piracy" pop up on their desktop.

Is there any script/dirty hacks that I can use to quickly scan the network for un-activated machines? I'm guessing it will probably be a powershell script stuck into a GPO, but that's as far as my imagination can take me at the moment.

Mark Henderson
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I did a blog post a while back talking about getting KMS setup. In it I include all the command line commands to get the machines registered. I'd just setup a batch file which is done as a run once that registers the machines against your KMS server.

In other words I'm just to lazy to find the machines, I'd just force them to all check back in and be done with it. All the Microsoft keys are linked to in my post as well.

mrdenny
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KMS is the way to go if you have Volume Keys. If you have MAK or Retail keys you can use the Volume Activation Management Tool from the Windows AIK to see which servers have been activated and activate those that need it.

Chris S
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