cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Windows KMS Activation issues after restore

arctics2
Level 5

Having an odd issue when restoring a vmware VM (Windows 2012 r2).  An application on the VM ties its license to the MAC address, so on completion of the restore, I manually change the MAC address back to the original MAC.

My problem is that Windows Activation is lost.  When trying to run slmgr /ato it errors out with 0xC004F074 The Software Licensing Service reported that the computer could not be activated.  No Key Management Service (KMS) could be contacted.

I have already tried running slmgr /skms to specify the name of the kms host, and I have confirmed I can telnet to the KMS host on 1688.

The original VM is working fine and can activate normally.

Any advise is appreciated.

1 REPLY 1

Nicolai
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP   

I suspect the restored VM has been kicked out off the AD.

This happens when the hosts AD object and AD object time staps diffrence get too large.

Once re-joined to the AD a KMS activation should be possible.