windows activation
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Just upgraded fog to 1.5.0 . Created my first image and deployed that image to a test machine. Running windows 10 pro education… noticed after the deployment that the on the test machine windows was not activated. Learn that fog prep was not needed for windows 10. Any thoughts??
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@jpaul Understand that imaging and activation are not the same.
How are you attempting to activate that computer? Did you include the MAK/KMS key in your unattend.xml file? Are you wanting fog to activate it? If so did you install the fog client on the computer before you captured it?
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I am wanting fog to activate it. And yes I installed the client on the computer before I captured it.
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@jpaul Did you include the key in the host management page?
Also what kind of key are you using(MAK,KMS)?
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I did not include activation key in host management page. Where is that located? I think we use KMS for the kind of key implemented.
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@jpaul Do you sysprep your image? If not, this would explain the non-activation status as well. As @george1421 stated, you could use the product key field on the host edit elements to perform this as well, but I might recommend away from using this method when a simpler and probably better means would be done using sysprep. (Particularly since kms, if I recall, uses SID based elements, and if your image is not sysprepped this might cause issues, as well for WSUS if you use that in your environment)
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@tom-elliott . I do not sysprep my images. Never have done this. Used fog for 8 plus years and have never ran into any problems with sid’s and such. Used fogprep in previous instances especially with win 7 to image and had great success. Looks like I will have to learn the sysprep process. Do you have any great tutorials on how to start this process with moving forward. Thanks in advance.
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@jpaul Some people say that sysprep isn’t necessary, and I say its not technically necessary when deploying to the same hardware class. If you want to create one image for all hardware then you do need to sysprep your image. With that said, I’ve always sysprep’d my images. Fogprep is a bit before my time, but didn’t fogprep just do some clean up stuff then call sysprep?
Learning sysprep, that are TONS of how to guides on the internet on how to setup your unattend.xml file, since this IS the microsoft’s way of imaging (using sysprep and unattend.xml). Also another word of warning, don’t connect your reference computer to AD before you sysprep it. Doing so will tattoo your reference image with/in AD. Do all of your setup work with your golden image as a standalone workstation.
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If you are looking for a good place to start with a generic unattend.xml file you can make your unattend.xml file using one of the online calculator tools. Just don’t put your company confidential information in these calculators. This site is pretty good: http://windowsafg.no-ip.org/
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But, back on your original post. You can either define the VL Key in the proper field for the host, or you can define it in the global key configuration in the fog configuration->AD (I believe). You can also use the FOG group set function to assign a key to a group of existing computers. This will update the key in the individual host management page.
As you can see there are a number of ways to go about doing what you need.