Sorry if i'm a bit OT, but i need a little advise. I'm going to install Windows on my new PC...and i've doubts about which way is the best for my situation: 1) W8 and MTK and wait for news about KMS V6 2) W8.1 and wait (there are 30 days trial, right?) for news about KMS V6 3) ??? In my pants what you should do?
So...I just registered to this forum. I've been reading for a while. In fact, I've read this entire thread...all 1393 posts (of which several dozen were useful). I'm new here but not new to forum etiquette. Please just sit down and read through this thread patiently, after which you will be fully knowledgeable on everything being discussed here. I was lucky enough to permanently activate about six installations back in Dec-Jan under....well forget that...it'll just confuse those that don't know what I'm talking about. I took an interest to clean installs of 8.1 however and wanted to give it a try. I know it's simple enough to manually activate (for 180 days) a VL installation with an active KMS server but I wanted something with a little self sufficiency and a little less extra software running. Naturally, the KMSMicro discussion fascinated me. I decided to read every post here in my spare time over the course of a few days and took notes and organized all the files I would need including a downloaded copy of KMSMicro 5.0.1 (<---all u other [new people] pay attention to this advice). random info: I often make use of virtual machines using VMware Player 6 and have a permanently activated copy of 8.1 running in there that I clone for my testing (although I didn't use that copy in this test since it's already permanently activated). ______________________________________________ I grabbed myself an ISO of WINDOWS.8.1.PROFESSIONAL.RTM.X64, verified the hash, and ripped it to a brand new 8GB USB stick for permanent use...on that stick I loaded up a few extra tools including KMSMicro 5.0.1 and of course my notes. I wanted to get my toolkit prepared before I tested so I can duplicate the process easily on any machine. Besides....because I read this entire thread before trying it I was highly confident I would be successful the first try!! Ultimately I want to keep a copy of KMSMicro on the activated machine as a backup only without having to use it or run it on that machine (call me paranoid). I figure it will be greatly improved in five to six months anyway. Keep in mind that I did a few things differently from some of the others here....not better or worse, just different mainly for the reasons described above. There are several different ways to accomplish this goal of KMS activation and this is just one. I conducted this test in a VMware Player 6.0.0 Virtual Machine and never connected the VM to the internet at all during the whole process. As it turned out 6.0.0 had an issue that was updated in 6.0.1 preventing it from connecting through the host’s network when the host is running 8.1 but that's mostly irrelevant. ______________________________________________ So here's a summary of my success story... Install Win 8.1 X64 Pro VL clean from DVD, ISO or USB (no VL key required in my case, just install Windows) Did not connect to the Internet (optional...won't hurt if you do) Turn off Windows Update during install (doesn't matter really but I did) Turn it on again later if you wish Configure Windows setup as desired and once finished installing go to the desktop (I installed VMware Tools at this point but...irrelevant and may not apply to you) Manually set time zone on machine to be activated to UTC+4 (Moscow)Go to Desktop locate and run KMSMicro 5.0.1 from USB thumb drive or Hard Drive - (maybe have to change language to English)...setting/language/english then restart - go to setting tab / click on "installing TAP" button (just let the installer run using default settings)Back to machine to be activated...In Windows....open "network and sharing center" then click on "change adapter settings" rename TAP connection to "tap1" (no quotes)open Command Prompt(Admin) as Admin (right click Windows start or press Windows+X and just select it from the menu)- enter the following text exactly:slmgr -skms KMSMICRO-PC:1688 slmgr -ato done! verify activation by also entering the following command (optional)slmgr -xpr (you can also change your time zone back to your local time now too)______________________________________________ A couple points here.... I never bridged my LAN connection to the "tap1" interface. It wasn't necessary because I manually set my new Windows installations local time to match that of the KMS server (one of several ways to deal with that issue). You can change it back to your time zone later no problem or you can set the time zone in the KMSMicro VM. Again, this is just because I wanted to accomplish this totally offline. Don't be confused by the fact I did this on a virtual machine. A physical machine will behave the same way. The host of my VM is irrelevant but it just so happened to be a permanently activated 8.1 Pro with WMC running on a high end custom portable. The VM running Windows 7 that is part of KMSMicro is not related to this....think of it as a machine within a machine within a machine in my experiment. I like using Virtual Machines when messing around because they can be cloned or discarded and insulate the host from damage caused by malware or screw ups. It'a also great for running other operating systems but I digress. If you're not familiar check out VMWare. ______________________________________________ Now....I have some questions for the experts out there.... My goal is to be able run KMSMicro from a VM and then just activate any machine on my LAN or my extended LAN using a VPN of some sort but while I've created basic VPNs using various tools I'm totally lame at making them work consistently (although I understand even experts struggle with this). Maybe it could be configured to work through Hamachi since that's a great VPN solution for noobs. Messingaround further with my new VM running 8.1… It's easy enough to connect a VMWare VM to your LAN by configuring the network settings in the VM and it simply appears to be another physical machine running on the LAN independent of the host. I did this and then bridged the tap1 connection to the VM LAN, started the KMSMicro console and.....I was able to ping the KMSMicro console from outside the host with either the local ip and "ping KMSMICRO-PC" !!!this looks promising!!!... I'm assuming this would just work but I don't have another physical machine handy to test an actual installation of 8.1 right now. When activating another machine on the LAN other than the host that is running KMSMicro would you enter either the local ip of the console i.e. slmgr -skms 192.168.xxx.xxx:1688 or slmgr -skms KMSMICRO-PC:1688? Not sure if you need the port number attached or not....I don't know but it's easy enough to test later once I have another computer or VM. I think a few of you are working on such a project right now anyway right? So I'm not the only one. I understand the goal is to get the console to run on it's own in a stripped down VM but isn't that pretty much what it's doing now anyway? And if I can run it in a VM and activate computers over a LAN or a VPN then this is a pretty good solution anyway. Again, I know the simplest option is to wait for a public KMS server to come online and manually activate but that's a PITA to keep track of and this is really easy once it's set up....or it can be easy. Just my $.02 I'm building a couple new physical rigs over the next few weeks and I'm going to try this on those unless something better comes along that quickly. I will follow up with my results. If I can keep up with this thread!
@ \/\/[][]|)y Well that is a super 1st post by a newbe,if there is a prize for newbe of the month you just won it
Thank you! Only one question: how to convert Retail -> VL (i've an ISO Pro Retail to use..)? Is it OK the Code: slmgr.vbs -ipk <KEY> to replace retail key with volume key after installation?
Both hyphen and slash work fine. All four of the following give identical result: Code: slmgr /dlv slmgr -dlv slmgr.vbs /dlv slmgr.vbs -dlv
Simple Procedure for Activation Thanks for all the stuff. KMSMicro seems really good tool. But if someone like me does not want to run any tool for activation, simply use“Command Prompt (Admin)” and activate windows 8.1 and Office 2013 (64 bit). This procedure is already described in some earlier posts but adding for reference gain. (Page 134, Post 1332) For activation, we need to know KMS server address. Can be found in earlier post. May have to try few ones before active KMS server can be found. Actual address of KMS server is referred as “kmshostaddress” Simple procedure: Just install windows 8.1 Enterprise Open Command Prompt(Admin) and type commands as following slmgr.vbs -skms kmshostaddress slmgr.vbs -ato slmgr.vbs -ckms slmgr.vbs –xpr with each command, info window is displayed. For Office 2013 (64bit) cd c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15 cscript ospp.vbs /sethst:kmshostaddress cscript ospp.vbs /act cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus cscript ospp.vbs /remhst For Office 2013 (32 bit) cd c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15 cscript ospp.vbs /sethst:kmshostaddress cscript ospp.vbs /act cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus cscript ospp.vbs /remhst These activations are for 180 days only. After that have to follow same procedure.
As you are the MDL spokesperson for Ratiborus on the ru-board, let me say first of all, great job at providing us the updates for his work. This latest VM for workstation works flawlessy and much faster than the QEMU version, which also worked flawlessly. There is an issue with the VMWare version due to the fact that the W7 image is encrypted for obvious reasons. The downside of that is that to run this machine similar to a service on a real server requires that the user be logged on to the host server. If the VMWare image were not encrypted, it could be run as a shared image, thus enabling the user to log out of the actual host machine. This isn't a show stopper, but I wonder if there is anyway around the encryption, leaving the settings passworded? Again, thanks for all your efforts, particularly the English help files.