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Windows will not stay activated in my network after using Acronis combined with sysprep to deploy.

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I am a network administrator for a school in Berlin Germany. We just received 100 new computers and am in the process of deploying all of them. We have been using Acronis combined with sysprep to create the image and deploy the units.
The problem is when I go to deploy the units into the labs or classroom, I activate windows, it tells me that my windows is now activated and all is right with the world. Then as soon as a student or another teacher logs in it tells them that their copy of windows has not been activated and that I need to activate.
What step have I missed in this process, or is it an issue with sysprep or Acronis that I need to know a work around on?
Thank you for your help
Patrick

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Patrick,

Just so that I understand your process, am I correct to think you:

1. You create a master machine which you then sysprep.

2. This sysprepped Pc is then imaged by 2013 into a tib file.

3. Either via PXE or some other method, this image is pushed/installed onto other PCs, or, do you just recover the 2013 tib file onto each PC?

Is your Microsoft licence an entrerprise one, or locally per the computer manufacturers PID?

Which Windows OS are you using?

With sysprep you can't activate the Windows you are making the image on and then install that image on another PC, Windows will ignore the activation and require reactivating by the new user.

Do you use an unattended.xml file.

Are you using the slmgr -ipk if using volume licensing?

Is there an internet connection available to the PC when it is first booted?

Of course at a cost Acronis have SnapDeploy 4 to cover this sort of thing.

Thank you for your quick response.
Our Microsoft license is an enterprise.
We are running Windows 7 64 bit
We have an internet connection to all the machines if needed.
We did use a unattended.xml file
We are using the slmgr -ipk
I think our problem is that we activated windows on the original "seed" machine, and then deployed that image to the other machines. If this is in fact what we did is it possible to go back to the newly imaged machines and fix it individually, or do I need to create a new image, and re install this newest, properly syspreped image on all the machines?

Thanks again for your insight
Patrick

Patrick,

I think you are going to have to remake your image.

I would ahve thought the volume licensing server would have picked up the licence and activated it, but Microsoft have changed the various volume activation mechanisms so maybe not.

Does the Microsoft volume licensing/Sysprep knowledge base have any useful information about this?

There might be a couple of MVPs who know more about volume licensing, I'll see whay they have to say.