I had to reimagine a laptop that was running vista business using a KMS
license.
Now the computer is saying the hardware was changed (the hard drive was
replaced).
How do I force the computer to contactthe KMS server and re-activate?

Thanks.

ed

"Eddie Walker" <ewalker3@newsgroup> wrote:

>I had to reimagine a laptop that was running vista business using a KMS
>license. Now the computer is saying the hardware was changed (the
> hard drive was replaced).
> How do I force the computer to contactthe KMS server and re-activate?

Open an elevated command prompt dialog box; from the command prompt issue
the command:

SLMGR -ATO

If the KMS is active and has had enough recent activation requests, that
will do the job.

Note: on some Vista systems (including RTM) you may need to ensure that the
KMS box is reachable *at boot time* for the activation to succeed using just
the command I showed above. If activation fails and you know that KMS is
valid and active, find the DNS name of the KMS box and from an elevated
prompt issue:

SLMGR -SKMS foobar.microsoft.com

(with - obviously, I hope - the dummy hostname replaced by that of your
KMS). This will tell the Vista box where the KMS can be found; it will no
longer query DNS for that information via an SRV record.

Wait for the response from SLMGR (the command prompt will appear immediately
after entering the command...wait for the Windows dialog box before
continuing) Then issue

SLMGR -ATO


and you should be activated for another 180 days.

Joe Morris