Friday, November 16, 2012

Activating Windows 7 Enterprise

I added the Windows 7 Enterprise disk, from MSDN, to my Windows Deployment Server (WDS), so I could install a test client PC.

The first thing I learned is that a WDS (PXE boot) Approval or Rejection is for the device (not the attempt) and is remembered by the WDS server. So, having rejected the first attempt for laughs, it then would not allow the client PC to connect again via PXE. It won’t let me delete the rejection from the list via the UI and gives an error if I try to Approve a Rejected request.

A bit of Googling indicates that these will tidy themselves up automatically: rejections after 1 day and approvals after 30, but I want the rejection gone now. I used the command line to do this, however, right-clicking on Pending devices in the WDS UI shows built-in Delete Approvals and Delete Rejections actions (in Windows Server 2012 WDS at least).

I then installed Windows 7 but activation kept failing with “DNS Name does not exist”. More Googling reveals it’s probably trying to connect to a Key Management Server (KMS) as it’s the Enterprise edition. Control Panel > System > Windows Activation > Change Product Key lets me enter my MSDN key and activates successfully. Then there are ~100 Windows Updates to install.

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