Disabling activation on qa machines

NTDEV
1

Hi,

Does anybody know a way to disable Windows activation, on W2k3 and W2k8?
Guaranteeing no activation would be best, but some registry change that just
makes it a bit harder would do.

I want our QA group to use fresh OS installs for driver testing, and don’t
want them to use up our MSDN activations.

I already know how to shut up the reminder message, but would like a way to
stop QA from activating when the final reminder says activate or else. This
is a good clue that a fresh OS image is needed (probably long before this).

In the past, we have sometimes installed the OS on QA machines, activated
it, and then made a volume backup (like with imagex). The backup can then be
restored to get back a fresh OS. This has the downside that if we
reconfigure test machines, we have used up activations on systems that no
longer exist.

Jan

2

Have a meeting. Invite all of QA to the meeting. Tell them “please do not
activate test systems”. Post a sign, a big sign, in the QA test lab. The
sign should read something like: “PLEASE DO NOT ACTIVATE TEST SYSTEMS”. Send
out a monthly reminder via email to all development and test staff to not
activate test systems. As far as I know, there is no way to avoid the
activation dialog.

I’ve never run out of MSDN activations. If you have multiple MSDN licenses
you have a lot of keys. MSDN claims that re-activations on the same physical
system do not decrement the activation count. If you actually run out you
can just call MSDN and get a new key. Relax, don’t worry.

From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Jan Bottorff
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:01 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines

Hi,

Does anybody know a way to disable Windows activation, on W2k3 and W2k8?
Guaranteeing no activation would be best, but some registry change that just
makes it a bit harder would do.

I want our QA group to use fresh OS installs for driver testing, and don’t
want them to use up our MSDN activations.

I already know how to shut up the reminder message, but would like a way to
stop QA from activating when the final reminder says activate or else. This
is a good clue that a fresh OS image is needed (probably long before this).

In the past, we have sometimes installed the OS on QA machines, activated
it, and then made a volume backup (like with imagex). The backup can then be
restored to get back a fresh OS. This has the downside that if we
reconfigure test machines, we have used up activations on systems that no
longer exist.

Jan

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

3

A decent way of doing it is to leave the burden of managing activations to your Sysadmin or to your Release Engineering group. That provides a centralized point for software licence administration, and it also centralizes internal support issues.

I would also let QA decide what testbeds better suit their testing, I’m not too sure it’s a development chore to go around bossing other groups about what OS’s and configurations they should use: these things must be solved by negotiation, and QA must have the power of veto over things that have to do with their own testing. And, very important, QA should be independent from development, because their very mission is to police development!

I would also reconsider my demand that QA should only use freshly installed OS’s: that’s not the way users normally do things in the field. Not testing enough on an existing installation shields the software being tested from all kinds of real world considerations. You can afford to activate the OS on some machines, because those installations would have staying power; and you can have more than one OS on a machine. You can’t probably do that for all systems, but you may be able to have a few reserved machines where OS reinstallations only happen once in a blue moon.

The problem of MSDN activations is a serious one, because MSDN is so expensive. Yet, I believe QA should have their own MSDN subscription(s), independent from development. Also consider that QA only needs the OS level subscription, except maybe on the nightly build machine (which may belong to Release Engineering and not to QA anyway), and that only if you use MSVC to build your drivers. And the OS subscription is cheaper.

MSDN subscriptions should be considered as a part of the cost of doing business, and responsibility for having enough lawful activations to go around should be laid square on management’s shoulders.

Or so do I believe!

Alberto.

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Roddy
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:49 AM
Subject: RE: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines

Have a meeting. Invite all of QA to the meeting. Tell them “please do not activate test systems”. Post a sign, a big sign, in the QA test lab. The sign should read something like: “PLEASE DO NOT ACTIVATE TEST SYSTEMS”. Send out a monthly reminder via email to all development and test staff to not activate test systems. As far as I know, there is no way to avoid the activation dialog.

I’ve never run out of MSDN activations. If you have multiple MSDN licenses you have a lot of keys. MSDN claims that re-activations on the same physical system do not decrement the activation count. If you actually run out you can just call MSDN and get a new key. Relax, don’t worry.

From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Jan Bottorff
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:01 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines

Hi,

Does anybody know a way to disable Windows activation, on W2k3 and W2k8? Guaranteeing no activation would be best, but some registry change that just makes it a bit harder would do.

I want our QA group to use fresh OS installs for driver testing, and don’t want them to use up our MSDN activations.

I already know how to shut up the reminder message, but would like a way to stop QA from activating when the final reminder says activate or else. This is a good clue that a fresh OS image is needed (probably long before this).

In the past, we have sometimes installed the OS on QA machines, activated it, and then made a volume backup (like with imagex). The backup can then be restored to get back a fresh OS. This has the downside that if we reconfigure test machines, we have used up activations on systems that no longer exist.

Jan

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

4

A quick Google search indicates that ports 80 and 443 are the ones used
during windows activation. (http and shttp)

Depending upon the type of driver and testing your QA team will be
preforming, perhaps using a cheap router and blocking those particular ports
would suffice.

Not sure if this would work; I’ve never tried it but perhaps you might
investigate. If it did work, it’d probably be a better approach than the
memo that no one got…

5

In addition, from this morning’s re-reading of MSDN activation policies,
I learned that an MSDN product license is a per-user license rather than
a per-system license. Technically each person using a system with an
MSDN installed OS has to have an MSDN license. How Microsoft figures
that is a reasonable and practical policy for a development/test
organization is anyone’s guess. Perhaps their volume licensing for MSDN
mitigates this nonsense. Microsoft partners have other mechanisms for
test installations of the OS that avoid this problem entirely, and
sufficiently large organizations should consider that approach.

From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Alberto Moreira
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 8:15 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines

A decent way of doing it is to leave the burden of managing activations
to your Sysadmin or to your Release Engineering group. That provides a
centralized point for software licence administration, and it also
centralizes internal support issues.

I would also let QA decide what testbeds better suit their testing, I’m
not too sure it’s a development chore to go around bossing other groups
about what OS’s and configurations they should use: these things must be
solved by negotiation, and QA must have the power of veto over things
that have to do with their own testing. And, very important, QA should
be independent from development, because their very mission is to police
development!

I would also reconsider my demand that QA should only use freshly
installed OS’s: that’s not the way users normally do things in the
field. Not testing enough on an existing installation shields the
software being tested from all kinds of real world considerations. You
can afford to activate the OS on some machines, because those
installations would have staying power; and you can have more than one
OS on a machine. You can’t probably do that for all systems, but you may
be able to have a few reserved machines where OS reinstallations only
happen once in a blue moon.

The problem of MSDN activations is a serious one, because MSDN is so
expensive. Yet, I believe QA should have their own MSDN subscription(s),
independent from development. Also consider that QA only needs the OS
level subscription, except maybe on the nightly build machine (which may
belong to Release Engineering and not to QA anyway), and that only if
you use MSVC to build your drivers. And the OS subscription is cheaper.

MSDN subscriptions should be considered as a part of the cost of doing
business, and responsibility for having enough lawful activations to go
around should be laid square on management’s shoulders.

Or so do I believe!

Alberto.

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Roddy mailto:xxxxx

To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
mailto:xxxxx

Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:49 AM

Subject: RE: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines

Have a meeting. Invite all of QA to the meeting. Tell them
“please do not activate test systems”. Post a sign, a big sign, in the
QA test lab. The sign should read something like: “PLEASE DO NOT
ACTIVATE TEST SYSTEMS”. Send out a monthly reminder via email to all
development and test staff to not activate test systems. As far as I
know, there is no way to avoid the activation dialog.

I’ve never run out of MSDN activations. If you have multiple
MSDN licenses you have a lot of keys. MSDN claims that re-activations on
the same physical system do not decrement the activation count. If you
actually run out you can just call MSDN and get a new key. Relax, don’t
worry.

From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Jan Bottorff
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:01 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines

Hi,

Does anybody know a way to disable Windows activation, on W2k3
and W2k8? Guaranteeing no activation would be best, but some registry
change that just makes it a bit harder would do.

I want our QA group to use fresh OS installs for driver testing,
and don’t want them to use up our MSDN activations.

I already know how to shut up the reminder message, but would
like a way to stop QA from activating when the final reminder says
activate or else. This is a good clue that a fresh OS image is needed
(probably long before this).

In the past, we have sometimes installed the OS on QA machines,
activated it, and then made a volume backup (like with imagex). The
backup can then be restored to get back a fresh OS. This has the
downside that if we reconfigure test machines, we have used up
activations on systems that no longer exist.

Jan

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars
visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars
visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer</mailto:xxxxx></mailto:xxxxx>

6

I would agree with Mark that running out of licenses under these
circumstances is not something to worry about. However, for the sake of
experimentation, disabling the Software Licensing service will prevent
activation; it will fail with a totally meaningless error message.
Actually, just stopping it will do this as well. On that score, you
should be good for the grace period. If I recall correctly, when the
grace period is over, if the service odes not autostart, you have to
reinstall, or at least I couldn’t figure out how to solve the problem in
a short enough time frame to make it worth proceeding otherwise. The
problem is that I can’t say that I have ever run for an extended period
of time like this, nor did I have anything else installed, which might
matter if you have other Microsoft applications that need activation (I
assume that these exist; I really don’t know.) That is, all this
machine did was serve as a kernel debugger target, and there are
warnings about “running in reduced functionaily mode.” I don’t know
what the implications of this are, and surely they exist. This is just
an idea to try; I just messed around with it for a day or two.

Good luck,

mm

Alberto Moreira wrote:

A decent way of doing it is to leave the burden of managing activations
to your Sysadmin or to your Release Engineering group. That provides a
centralized point for software licence administration, and it also
centralizes internal support issues.

I would also let QA decide what testbeds better suit their testing, I’m
not too sure it’s a development chore to go around bossing other groups
about what OS’s and configurations they should use: these things must be
solved by negotiation, and QA must have the power of veto over things
that have to do with their own testing. And, very important, QA should
be independent from development, because their very mission is to police
development!

I would also reconsider my demand that QA should only use freshly
installed OS’s: that’s not the way users normally do things in the
field. Not testing enough on an existing installation shields the
software being tested from all kinds of real world considerations. You
can afford to activate the OS on some machines, because those
installations would have staying power; and you can have more than one
OS on a machine. You can’t probably do that for all systems, but you may
be able to have a few reserved machines where OS reinstallations only
happen once in a blue moon.

The problem of MSDN activations is a serious one, because MSDN is so
expensive. Yet, I believe QA should have their own MSDN subscription(s),
independent from development. Also consider that QA only needs the OS
level subscription, except maybe on the nightly build machine (which may
belong to Release Engineering and not to QA anyway), and that only if
you use MSVC to build your drivers. And the OS subscription is cheaper.

MSDN subscriptions should be considered as a part of the cost of doing
business, and responsibility for having enough lawful activations to go
around should be laid square on management’s shoulders.

Or so do I believe!

Alberto.

----- Original Message -----
*From:* Mark Roddy mailto:xxxxx
> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> mailto:xxxxx
> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:49 AM
> Subject: RE: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines
>
> Have a meeting. Invite all of QA to the meeting. Tell them “please
> do not activate test systems”. Post a sign, a big sign, in the QA
> test lab. The sign should read something like: “PLEASE DO NOT
> ACTIVATE TEST SYSTEMS”. Send out a monthly reminder via email to all
> development and test staff to not activate test systems. As far as I
> know, there is no way to avoid the activation dialog.
>
>
>
> I’ve never run out of MSDN activations. If you have multiple MSDN
> licenses you have a lot of keys. MSDN claims that re-activations on
> the same physical system do not decrement the activation count. If
> you actually run out you can just call MSDN and get a new key.
> Relax, don’t worry.
>
>
>
> From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] *On Behalf Of *Jan Bottorff
> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:01 AM
> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> Subject: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Does anybody know a way to disable Windows activation, on W2k3 and
> W2k8? Guaranteeing no activation would be best, but some registry
> change that just makes it a bit harder would do.
>
>
>
> I want our QA group to use fresh OS installs for driver testing, and
> don’t want them to use up our MSDN activations.
>
>
>
> I already know how to shut up the reminder message, but would like a
> way to stop QA from activating when the final reminder says activate
> or else. This is a good clue that a fresh OS image is needed
> (probably long before this).
>
>
>
> In the past, we have sometimes installed the OS on QA machines,
> activated it, and then made a volume backup (like with imagex). The
> backup can then be restored to get back a fresh OS. This has the
> downside that if we reconfigure test machines, we have used up
> activations on systems that no longer exist.
>
>
>
> Jan
>
>
>
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer</mailto:xxxxx></mailto:xxxxx>

7

I mean to say running out of activations is not something to worry
about, not licenses. Big difference.

mm
Martin O’Brien wrote:

I would agree with Mark that running out of licenses under these
circumstances is not something to worry about. However, for the sake of
experimentation, disabling the Software Licensing service will prevent
activation; it will fail with a totally meaningless error message.
Actually, just stopping it will do this as well. On that score, you
should be good for the grace period. If I recall correctly, when the
grace period is over, if the service odes not autostart, you have to
reinstall, or at least I couldn’t figure out how to solve the problem in
a short enough time frame to make it worth proceeding otherwise. The
problem is that I can’t say that I have ever run for an extended period
of time like this, nor did I have anything else installed, which might
matter if you have other Microsoft applications that need activation (I
assume that these exist; I really don’t know.) That is, all this
machine did was serve as a kernel debugger target, and there are
warnings about “running in reduced functionaily mode.” I don’t know
what the implications of this are, and surely they exist. This is just
an idea to try; I just messed around with it for a day or two.

Good luck,

mm

Alberto Moreira wrote:
> A decent way of doing it is to leave the burden of managing
> activations to your Sysadmin or to your Release Engineering group.
> That provides a centralized point for software licence administration,
> and it also centralizes internal support issues.
>
> I would also let QA decide what testbeds better suit their testing,
> I’m not too sure it’s a development chore to go around bossing other
> groups about what OS’s and configurations they should use: these
> things must be solved by negotiation, and QA must have the power of
> veto over things that have to do with their own testing. And, very
> important, QA should be independent from development, because their
> very mission is to police development!
>
> I would also reconsider my demand that QA should only use freshly
> installed OS’s: that’s not the way users normally do things in the
> field. Not testing enough on an existing installation shields the
> software being tested from all kinds of real world considerations. You
> can afford to activate the OS on some machines, because those
> installations would have staying power; and you can have more than one
> OS on a machine. You can’t probably do that for all systems, but you
> may be able to have a few reserved machines where OS reinstallations
> only happen once in a blue moon.
>
> The problem of MSDN activations is a serious one, because MSDN is so
> expensive. Yet, I believe QA should have their own MSDN
> subscription(s), independent from development. Also consider that QA
> only needs the OS level subscription, except maybe on the nightly
> build machine (which may belong to Release Engineering and not to QA
> anyway), and that only if you use MSVC to build your drivers. And the
> OS subscription is cheaper.
>
> MSDN subscriptions should be considered as a part of the cost of doing
> business, and responsibility for having enough lawful activations to
> go around should be laid square on management’s shoulders.
>
> Or so do I believe!
>
>
> Alberto.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Mark Roddy mailto:xxxxx
>> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
>> mailto:xxxxx
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:49 AM
>> Subject: RE: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines
>>
>> Have a meeting. Invite all of QA to the meeting. Tell them “please
>> do not activate test systems”. Post a sign, a big sign, in the QA
>> test lab. The sign should read something like: “PLEASE DO NOT
>> ACTIVATE TEST SYSTEMS”. Send out a monthly reminder via email to all
>> development and test staff to not activate test systems. As far as I
>> know, there is no way to avoid the activation dialog.
>>
>>
>> I’ve never run out of MSDN activations. If you have multiple MSDN
>> licenses you have a lot of keys. MSDN claims that re-activations on
>> the same physical system do not decrement the activation count. If
>> you actually run out you can just call MSDN and get a new key.
>> Relax, don’t worry.
>>
>>
>> From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
>> [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] *On Behalf Of *Jan Bottorff
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:01 AM
>> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
>> Subject: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> Does anybody know a way to disable Windows activation, on W2k3 and
>> W2k8? Guaranteeing no activation would be best, but some registry
>> change that just makes it a bit harder would do.
>>
>>
>> I want our QA group to use fresh OS installs for driver testing, and
>> don’t want them to use up our MSDN activations.
>>
>>
>> I already know how to shut up the reminder message, but would like a
>> way to stop QA from activating when the final reminder says activate
>> or else. This is a good clue that a fresh OS image is needed
>> (probably long before this).
>>
>>
>> In the past, we have sometimes installed the OS on QA machines,
>> activated it, and then made a volume backup (like with imagex). The
>> backup can then be restored to get back a fresh OS. This has the
>> downside that if we reconfigure test machines, we have used up
>> activations on systems that no longer exist.
>>
>>
>> Jan
>>
>>
>>
>> —
>> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>>
>> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
>> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>>
>> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
>> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>>
>>
>> —
>> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>>
>> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
>> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>>
>> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
>> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
></mailto:xxxxx></mailto:xxxxx>

8

I typically make a clean install of an OS and then activate it. Immediately
I make a Ghost copy of the activated image.

From then on I have a “clean” and activated copy of the OS to work with as
long as I use it on the same machine.

This may not work for others, but does for me.

Thomas F. Divine

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:bounce-303487-
xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Martin O’Brien
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 10:23 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines

I mean to say running out of activations is not something to worry
about, not licenses. Big difference.

mm
Martin O’Brien wrote:
> I would agree with Mark that running out of licenses under these
> circumstances is not something to worry about. However, for the sake
of
> experimentation, disabling the Software Licensing service will
prevent
> activation; it will fail with a totally meaningless error message.
> Actually, just stopping it will do this as well. On that score, you
> should be good for the grace period. If I recall correctly, when the
> grace period is over, if the service odes not autostart, you have to
> reinstall, or at least I couldn’t figure out how to solve the problem
in
> a short enough time frame to make it worth proceeding otherwise. The
> problem is that I can’t say that I have ever run for an extended
period
> of time like this, nor did I have anything else installed, which
might
> matter if you have other Microsoft applications that need activation
(I
> assume that these exist; I really don’t know.) That is, all this
> machine did was serve as a kernel debugger target, and there are
> warnings about “running in reduced functionaily mode.” I don’t know
> what the implications of this are, and surely they exist. This is
just
> an idea to try; I just messed around with it for a day or two.
>
> Good luck,
>
> mm
>
>
> Alberto Moreira wrote:
>> A decent way of doing it is to leave the burden of managing
>> activations to your Sysadmin or to your Release Engineering group.
>> That provides a centralized point for software licence
administration,
>> and it also centralizes internal support issues.
>>
>> I would also let QA decide what testbeds better suit their testing,
>> I’m not too sure it’s a development chore to go around bossing other
>> groups about what OS’s and configurations they should use: these
>> things must be solved by negotiation, and QA must have the power of
>> veto over things that have to do with their own testing. And, very
>> important, QA should be independent from development, because their
>> very mission is to police development!
>>
>> I would also reconsider my demand that QA should only use freshly
>> installed OS’s: that’s not the way users normally do things in the
>> field. Not testing enough on an existing installation shields the
>> software being tested from all kinds of real world considerations.
You
>> can afford to activate the OS on some machines, because those
>> installations would have staying power; and you can have more than
one
>> OS on a machine. You can’t probably do that for all systems, but you
>> may be able to have a few reserved machines where OS reinstallations
>> only happen once in a blue moon.
>>
>> The problem of MSDN activations is a serious one, because MSDN is so
>> expensive. Yet, I believe QA should have their own MSDN
>> subscription(s), independent from development. Also consider that QA
>> only needs the OS level subscription, except maybe on the nightly
>> build machine (which may belong to Release Engineering and not to QA
>> anyway), and that only if you use MSVC to build your drivers. And
the
>> OS subscription is cheaper.
>>
>> MSDN subscriptions should be considered as a part of the cost of
doing
>> business, and responsibility for having enough lawful activations to
>> go around should be laid square on management’s shoulders.
>>
>> Or so do I believe!
>>
>>
>> Alberto.
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* Mark Roddy mailto:xxxxx
> >> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> >> mailto:xxxxx
> >> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:49 AM
> >> Subject: RE: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines
> >>
> >> Have a meeting. Invite all of QA to the meeting. Tell them
> “please
> >> do not activate test systems”. Post a sign, a big sign, in the
> QA
> >> test lab. The sign should read something like: “PLEASE DO NOT
> >> ACTIVATE TEST SYSTEMS”. Send out a monthly reminder via email to
> all
> >> development and test staff to not activate test systems. As far
> as I
> >> know, there is no way to avoid the activation dialog.
> >>
> >>
> >> I’ve never run out of MSDN activations. If you have multiple
> MSDN
> >> licenses you have a lot of keys. MSDN claims that re-activations
> on
> >> the same physical system do not decrement the activation count.
> If
> >> you actually run out you can just call MSDN and get a new key.
> >> Relax, don’t worry.
> >>
> >>
> >> From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> >> [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] *On Behalf Of *Jan
> Bottorff
> >> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:01 AM
> >> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> >> Subject: [ntdev] Disabling activation on qa machines
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >>
> >> Does anybody know a way to disable Windows activation, on W2k3
> and
> >> W2k8? Guaranteeing no activation would be best, but some
> registry
> >> change that just makes it a bit harder would do.
> >>
> >>
> >> I want our QA group to use fresh OS installs for driver testing,
> and
> >> don’t want them to use up our MSDN activations.
> >>
> >>
> >> I already know how to shut up the reminder message, but would
> like a
> >> way to stop QA from activating when the final reminder says
> activate
> >> or else. This is a good clue that a fresh OS image is needed
> >> (probably long before this).
> >>
> >>
> >> In the past, we have sometimes installed the OS on QA machines,
> >> activated it, and then made a volume backup (like with imagex).
> The
> >> backup can then be restored to get back a fresh OS. This has the
> >> downside that if we reconfigure test machines, we have used up
> >> activations on systems that no longer exist.
> >>
> >>
> >> Jan
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> —
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> >>
> >>
> >> —
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> >>
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> >>
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> >
>
> —
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>
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