Hi everyone It's been a long time since I last posted, but at least I don't get chastised here for grey questions Long story short, I bought a brand new Dell PE server with a COA for Server 2019 Std, for less than the OEM cost of that OS, so essentially free, but low spec hardware. I'd like to keep this server in reserve, and not use it unless my current server dies. So here is the question, I want to use the new 2019 COA/key on my old server as it is much more powerful than the new one (I will be using Hyper-V Server (the free one) and 2 Server 2019 VM's. The new server, for whatever reason came disk-less, and the recovery image can only be downloaded from Dell using the original purchasers details, which I don't have. So i have a valid Server 2019 key/COA, but I've read that the key is just some sort of a placeholder, and will not activate. I presume that the real key is baked into the BIOS, this I have not checked yet. I know how to convert Server 2019 trial to standard, so having a usable ISO is not a problem Is it possible to activate either the BIOS key (assuming there is one) or the ROK key on the 2019 COA? Thank you very much ** Update ** Just checked the COA, and it might be straight OEM as it does not say ROK anywhere on it.
OK, After firing up the machine no key was found in the BIOS, used RW Everything and it turns out there is SLIC 2.5 in the BIOS, and because the server was shipped with Server 2019, it was already exposed. Did a quick install of 2019 and used DISM to add the Dell OEM:SLP key along with the Dell cert, all good. Windows is activated. Is this the same method to allow VM's to activate?