Windows 10 activation..

Discussion in 'Windows 10' started by Seronja, Apr 24, 2016.

  1. kunjar

    kunjar MDL Novice

    Apr 3, 2012
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    That thought did cross my mind since I remember using such a key when installing a previous version of office which the installer accepted, after which one could make use of the MSoft Toolkit. I shall google for a W7 Ult generic key and hopefully post back with success.

    And yes I absolutely agree that the deployment using DISM is so much quicker and efficient. What an elegant solution for running multiple OS's with dynamically expanding storage.

    As of writing I loaded up disk management and simply right clicked on the VHD to perform a quick format. So I can try another installation. How simple!
     
  2. T-S

    T-S MDL Guru

    Dec 14, 2012
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  3. kunjar

    kunjar MDL Novice

    Apr 3, 2012
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    #24 kunjar, Apr 29, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2016
    I discovered why the win7 ultimate iso was defaulting to a win 7 home installation. It was due to the "/Index:1" switch I was using. I did question this however failed to research it properly and just went with it to get my install done.
    Basically I was using the "DISM /Apply-Image /ImageFile:F:\sources\install.wim /Index:1 /ApplyDir:V:"

    However I found the command "DISM /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:F:\sources\install.wim" useful since it queries the "install.wim" file and outputs a list of all available windows versions along with their corresponding index number I.E.. Home, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate

    The corresponding number for Win 7 Ultimate was 4 therefore I replaced the switch "/Index:1" with "/Index:4" after which installation succeeded and accepted the generic win7 Ult key. Booted to the desktop and checked activation status. Obviously it was not activated. I tried windows update just to see how the system would respond, obviously received an error.

    Loaded up Daz loader. Now the laptop that im using for test purposes is a Lenovo G560 which already came preloaded with Win7 Home therefore has the SLIC 2.1 cert (but has since been upgraded to and is currently running win 10 pro). However, I thought I would test how the system responded to a different manufacturer profile so I used the Acer SLIC, Cert and Key. Hit Install and it succeeded. After a restart I checked the activation status in system properties and it stated that it was "activated" and genuine.

    I noticed the system became slow and sluggish a symptom of high memory usage by svchost.exe and my gut feeling was that it was the wuauserv responsible for this which it was. So I disabled wuauserv and downloaded the simplix pack instead. Far quicker to install the updates!

    As of writing im just waiting for the pack to finish installing and well ideally I need the Win 10 Pro upgrade rights to be triggered. Fingers crossed although I have a suspicion that they may not since I don't think one can upgrade installation in VHD. It might just be that I dont need to complete the entire upgrade process. Suppose if I can use the media creation tool "for this pc" and create a bootable USB or iso then it possibly might function.

    Prior to this I tried an Enterprise iso (when the win7 ult installation kept defaulting to win7 home and I didnt know why) which installed fine first time, and didnt prompt for a product key. Once I reached the desktop I installed .NET 4.6 (offline installer faster) and loaded up the "MSoft toolkit 2.5.3" and hit the EZ-Activator. It activated fine.

    Now the test for the Win 10 Home and GPT drive.
     
  4. Enthousiast

    Enthousiast MDL Tester

    Oct 30, 2009
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    The generic keys are KMS keys, no activating keys (also not for 10). And I said "To use daz there is no need to manually insert a key" already (only for those who release pre-activated win 7 with daz unattended, then it won't ask for a key during oobe) ;)
     
  5. T-S

    T-S MDL Guru

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    Seem a pointless distinction to me, generic keys are generic keys, not meant to lead to the activation.

    Then if technically they are KMS keys or not is the less interesting info ever IMO
     
  6. T-S

    T-S MDL Guru

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    Indeed w7x32 has from starter to ultimate on disk, w7x64 has from home premium to ultimate, win 10 has core and pro, servers has standard and datecenter, server essentials has only essentials.


    Some iso has x32 and x86 on them, the mileage varies



    To be clear, if you use the Daz loader with your native profile it installs just the key and the cert matching your bios, if the mobo is generic, or if you use a differnt profile it inst alls also "something" that emulates that bios "signature", in the firs case your win 7 is absolutely untouched and installed exactly as the maker did, in the second case there is an hack involved, although no windows files are touched/patched.


    Yes lately the first upgrade of win 7 and server 2008r2 is just a pain, anyway you dont need to upgrade if the genuine ticket is your sole purpose

    No, you can't, at least if using them natively, not sure about virtual machines

    I assume it's disabled on purpose, not 100% sure but I think you can't upgrade on VHDs no matter the way used